


Three Inches of Glass

by Ias



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Crossover, F/M, Gen, M/M, Teen Wolf Reverse Bang
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-16
Updated: 2013-01-16
Packaged: 2017-11-25 19:40:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 30,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/642321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ias/pseuds/Ias
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For years, Stiles has worked as a scientific researcher in the heart of the Initiative, an underground research facility dedicated to capturing and studying demons. But a sudden resurgence of werewolf activity in Beacon Hills throws his life into a storm of confused emotions, torn loyalties, and painful memories which could put everyone's lives in jeopardy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Three Inches of Glass

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much to [asylumbound360](http://asylumbound360.livejournal.com/) for the wonderful and inspiring fanart that this piece was based on. Also thanks to my betas Margo, Amy and Angela. You guys are amazing and I am totally going to buy you ice cream.

Stiles hated Beacon Hills. There, he said it. He still looked back fondly on the years in high school when he thought he’d be getting out, going to some snazzy college near some snazzy city, and all in all it would just be really snazzy. That was before he got pulled out of chem class one day by the people he would come to know as the Argents, who told him that there was a world of money and glory and science just waiting for him if he’d just sign the dotted line.

A week later, he scrawled his name across every piece of paper they could throw at him. Two days after that he was face to face with a werewolf. Although it was four years ago, he remembered the encounter well. The creature was hardly anything more than a lanky, feral dog, separated from him by a plate of electrified glass. Its blood smeared across the glass as it rammed into it again and again, teeth snapping and tongue lashing as it fought to get at Stiles’s throat. From what seemed like a long way away, one of the technicians explained how this HST had been captured outside a similar town fifty miles away after killing five people. They had him come in to observe it every day. On the fifth day they pumped the room full of wolfsbane gas until the creature stopped twitching for good. Some people might have called it inhumane. They weren’t the ones sitting three feet away as the creature tried, for every second he was there, to break through the glass and rip him apart.

It wasn’t really the introduction to the supernatural that Stiles had always dreamed of, but it did the trick. He had no doubts about the morality of their situation anymore. And in the end, dealing with vampires and werewolves and demons on a daily basis more than made up for being stuck in the middle of nowhere. That didn’t mean he wasn’t going to complain about it to anyone that would listen.

Which brought him to the present moment, in which he was expressing a similar sentiment to Lydia Martin.

“I’m just saying,” Stiles said, “why couldn’t they have set up shop outside LA? Just think of how awesome that would be. And come on, I watch the news. You are not going to try and tell me that after the whole ‘week of total night’ thing, there is nothing supernatural worth investigating there.”

Lydia walked primly, keeping her eyes straight ahead like there was nothing else worth looking at. “If I was actually willing to engage you in conversation about this, I would tell you that LA is already protected from the supernatural.”

Stiles widened his eyes. “What? I didn’t know we had a branch there.”

“We don’t.”

“Well, then how is it already protected?”

“That’s classified.” Lydia made no attempt to repress the glee in her voice. Those were her two favorite words ever, and pulling rank was a daily exercise. He made a face every time, but it didn’t really bother him. He usually managed to worm more information out of her anyway.

“Well, whoever they are, they should stop hogging all the fun,” Stiles groused. Lydia just smiled that haughty, mysterious smile of hers as they made their way up the steps to Doc Deaton’s veterinary clinic. The sign said closed, but they happily ignored it, going straight for the staff bathroom in the back of the building.

“I’m going to get out of here either way,” Stiles said as they stepped into the room, standing in front of the floor-length mirror there. Lydia took the opportunity to fuss with her hair while the green face-recognition scanner descended over their faces. “There’s a whole world of boogie monsters out there,” Stiles continued. “Beacon Hills can’t possibly be the only good place for a monster research facility.”

The mirror slid back to reveal a small room with walls so white that germs would disintegrate just from touching them. Stiles fidgeted as Lydia input the long, tedious code to a sleek panel on the side before the door whooshed shut braced against the faint suggestion of moving downwards very fast.

“I’m not saying I don’t like it here,” Stiles continued, leaning in so that the vocal scanner could capture his voice. “I just feel like somewhere else would be better.”

“The grass is always greener,” Lydia quipped, shooting him a glance. “Where else would you rather be?”

“I don’t know.” Stiles rubbed the back of his neck thoughtfully. “I heard Sunnydale has a Hellmouth. That could be fun.”

Lydia rolled her eyes. “Please. You know what happened to the branch we had there. Not to mention that giant snake demon. Far too much goo for my tastes.”

The doors slid open on a massive room bustling with activity, people in lab coats and body armor striding past with varying degrees of purposeful scowls. The ceiling stretched so high above them that Stiles would have to crane his neck back to see, which he didn’t do because last time he tried, he got bowled over by some GI Joe who must have failed the obstacle course.

What really grabbed his attention was the empty space in the middle of the floor. Despite the fact that he walked past it nearly every day, the Pit still gave his stomach knots. Sunken two stories into the floor, it was ringed with turrets and barbed wire. From here he couldn’t see, but Stiles knew that there would be rows and rows of neat tables down there, all of them impossibly clean. The ones not in use, at least. He forced that thought out of his mind. He didn’t have to deal with that right now.

Lydia set off at a brisk pace for Section 12, with Stiles scurrying in her shadow. They were almost to the door when a hand snaked out to grab Stiles by his shoulders and wrench him in the opposite direction.

“Woah, hey, what’s the problem—” he started, cut off by the sharp grin lining Allison Argent’s features. He couldn’t help but mirror it.

“You know, you could try a little less man-handling when it comes to saying hello,” Stiles said with annoyance, pulling Allison into a friendly hug all the same.

“Oh come on Stiles, I thought you liked to be man-handled,” she said mischievously, stepping back and patting the side of his face. “How’d your date go, by the way? His name was Danny, right?”

Stiles shrugged. “Yeah, it was fine.”

“Just fine?”

“Just fine.”

Rolling her eyes, Allison slung an arm across Stiles’s shoulders. “We’ll find you a honey sooner or later, Stilinski. Just you wait.”

“At this rate it’s looking like later rather than sooner,” Lydia purred, appearing by Allison’s other side.

Stiles frowned. “Well, we can’t all be weirdly infatuated with whatever creepy corpse is currently on the operating table,” he shot back. Lydia returned his glare.

“That joke doesn’t get any funnier the more times you tell it,” she said.

“Kids, no fighting,” Allison insisted, tugging Lydia over with a smile and ruffling her hair (to Lydia’s horror). “I’m about to go on mission. I don’t want to find you two wrecking the house when I get back.”

“Yes, Mom,” Stiles retorted, but couldn’t keep the grin off his face as Allison pulled away. She had that effect on people.

“Are we still on for shopping this weekend?” Lydia called after her as she headed off in the direction of the armory.

“You know it,” Allison shouted back, blowing them both a kiss before elbowing through a throng of agents.

When Stiles turned back to Lydia, she was looking at him strangely.

“When was the last time you dated someone seriously?” she asked, picking up her course for S17.

“When was the last time you and Allison stopped bugging me about my love life?” Stiles groaned, but his heart wasn’t really in it. This was a discussion he’d heard all too often lately.

“Probably Jessica,” he said eventually. “Or Michael, if you want to count that weird thing at Thanksgiving.”

Lydia shook her head. “Stiles, that was almost a year ago.”

“I am a strong independent white boy who don’t need no man or woman to complete me.”

“And no one can take that away from you. But as good as you’ve gotten at lying these past few years, you can’t fool the master. You aren’t happy, Stiles, and maybe you haven’t been for a while. This whole “Operation Leave Beacon Hills” thing is proof enough of that.”

“Well what about you?” Stiles said. “This blade cuts both ways, Lydia. When was the last time you saw someone naked who wasn’t all corpsified?”

Lydia’s mouth twisted ruefully. “Fair enough. I guess we’re all just poor, sad, loveless creatures.” She swiped her ID over the scanner to open the doors to S17. The hallway branched out here, the Ward in one direction and the Morgue in the other. With a small salute, Stiles headed to the left.

“Have fun cutting up dead things,” he said.

“Have fun staring at live ones.”

 

* * *

 

It was all business as usual until 2:33am.

Stiles had just about filled his clipboard with notes on some kind of slime demon they had dragged in last night. Sure, the majority of his notes were doodles of puppy dogs, but he still felt pretty productive. After all, slime demons didn’t do very much beside ooze around and excrete mucus. Not really Hollywood blockbuster material.

He was seeing how long he could keep his pencil balanced on the tip of his nose when the door at the end of the hallway burst open to reveal a frazzled-looking attendant. Stiles scarcely avoided falling out of his chair in his haste to scramble to his feet.

“The strike team just got back,” the attendant said. “They need you in Section 2.”

Stiles swallowed. Section 2 was where they put the biggest of big bads—or second biggest, at least. Whatever they needed him for, it must have been pretty high priority.

He followed the attendant through the long, bright hallways, neurotically stepping around the vents in the floors. Knowing that poison gas could come pumping out of them GLaDOS style should a Level 5 containment become necessary made him less than eager to dance a jig on them.

There was a weird sort of nervous energy in the air as he made his way to the entrance of S2. People were standing around in the hallways and shooting him glances, or meandering nonchalantly in the same direction they were going. Most of all, everyone was quiet. Stiles didn’t like that. Silence never sat well with him.

His guide paused outside the entrance to S2 as he swiped his card, presented his retinas and muttered a string of obscenities into the vocal scanner. After one last glance behind him, he stepped into the cool, clean air of S2 and heard the door whoosh shut behind him.

Sections 1-5 were different from the rest of the base. Everywhere else the cells were open to the rest of the hallway like segments of a high-tech and much more sanitary honeycomb. One well-positioned guard could see everything that was happening in that hallway, and they usually posted upwards of three.

Here, though, that wasn’t the case. The doors opened on a single circular room, with doors lining the walls like some kind of game show. Instead of the usual sterile white, every surface was a stormy grey. In the center of the room was Director Argent.

She had her back turned to Stiles and her hands clasped loosely behind her back, but turned to face him when Stiles walked in. As usual, Stiles found himself scrutinizing her face in search for anything that might suggest that she and Allison were related—he found none. She was cold where Allison was warm, hard where Allison was relaxed, haughty where Allison was humble. Stiles had seen bits of her surface in Allison sometimes, but never the other way around. He couldn’t imagine Director Argent cracking a smile that wasn’t predatory in nature.

Stiles felt his throat tighten, and he fought down the instinct to turn right back around and leave. Primal terror might not have seemed like a normal reaction to meeting your boss, but if you had to look into those cold, reptilian eyes, and then compose a coherent thought then you might understand. A small smile appeared on her face as Stiles paused a respectful distance away.

“You wanted to see me, Director?” For once, Stiles kept his tone professional.

Argent nodded. “Stiles. Thank you for coming.” Like he had a choice. “It’s been a while since we’ve chatted face to face. How are you?”

Stiles swallowed. “Good, fine, yeah,” he said. “Been keeping busy.”

“Very good.” The Director surveyed him appraisingly. “How would you feel about keeping busier?”

Stiles kept his face blank. “Ma’am?”

Argent smiled. It did nothing to soften her expression. “Through the door to my left, you will find your next assignment. I won’t lie to you, Stiles. It may prove difficult. But you’re the best man we have for the job, and I have every confidence that you will succeed.”

Suck it up and deal, in other words. Not like Stiles would ever complain to anyone but Lydia or Allison. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust his superiors; it was just that he thought they might murder him in his sleep, or put a chip in his head that made him more docile. Probably it was just his natural paranoia. But working for a secret (literally) underground organization didn’t do much to assuage that.

So instead he just nodded. “Of course, ma’am. What exactly should I expect to be dealing with here?”

As if on cue, one of the multiple doors slid open. “Why don’t you go find out?”

That left very little room for argument. Stiles bobbed his head and saluted, feeling like he ought to bow or kiss her ring or something, but hurried towards the new door before he could embarrass himself.

He stepped into the new room and the door closed behind him with a soft hiss. This room was smaller, but with the same conservative sense of decor. One wall was dedicated to an enormous blank screen, in front of which was a large gathering of people.

Stiles noticed Allison first. She was standing at the head of her squad, her arms clenched at her sides, her chin up and her eyes staring resolutely ahead. She didn’t turn to look at him when he came in. Stiles immediately knew something was wrong; Allison only shut down like this when the alternative was something violent. He quickly recognized Lydia’s flash of copper hair as well. Commander Argent, head of the military forces, stood in front of them all.

Commander Chris Argent studied him with flat blue eyes. Wherever Allison had gotten her warmth from, it wasn’t from either of her parents.

“Good,” Argent said crisply. “You’re here.”

“Here is where I am, alright,” Stiles said brightly, aware of the fact that he was babbling, but once he got nervous there was really no stopping it. “Speaking of which, where is here and why?”

“Consider this your briefing,” Argent said. Stiles fell in with Lydia and Allison, shooting nervous looks at the stony faces of the guards around him. “At oh-two-hundred hours, recon team six launched a strike against an area of suspected HST activity. Under Miss Argent’s leadership, one of their number was taken into custody.”

Argent gestured towards the screen behind them with a click of his remote, and the images changed to what looked like the security camera feed of a cell. Inside was a person—or, Stiles corrected himself, something person-shaped. As Stiles watched, the creature turned to the camera. There was a flash of red irises from inside of a twisted, grotesque face. Stiles pulled in a sharp breath.

“Is that what I think it is?” he said, wonderment leaking into his tone.

Argent smiled cruelly. “It is indeed.”

Stiles walked up to the screens and ran his fingers over the smooth surface, staring intently at the creature on the other side. It was still humanoid, but its mouth was sharp with fangs and its fingers ended in wicked claws. It had been a long time since he’d seen eyes like those.

“This isn’t possible,” Stiles said, turning back to Argent. “The werewolf packs of Beacon Hills were wiped out years ago.” He should know; he was there. He pushed the memory down.

Argent shook his head. "We thought so too. But it seems that they've been here the whole time, living right under our noses. They must have put enormous effort into avoiding us. It was only by luck that we discovered them this time."

“They?" Stiles asked, raising an eyebrow. “Unless my counting skills are worse than I imagined…”

“We were only able to capture the alpha. The rest of the pack is still out there, but I am confident that Allison's unit will bring them in shortly." Argent patted his daughter on the shoulder, and for a second Stiles was worried she was going to punch him. What the hell was wrong with her?

"We did manage to bring down another specimen, but it did not survive the process.” Argent continued, a frown creasing his forehead, "The only thing we're sure of is that it definitely isn't a werewolf, despite working with the pack like one. Lydia, your assignment is to identify the specimen and prepare a detailed report. You may start immediately."

She nodded, a tiny smile twitching at her lips. A new species to dissect. Very exciting times for her.

Stiles cleared his throat. "So what do you want me to do here?"

"You're the local werewolf expert. We expect you to do your job."

"There are many potential components of my job," Stiles said tiredly, rubbing his fingers into his eyes. "Many different kinds of testing that we have available to us. Which ones are you looking for?"

Argent's eyes flashed. "We have no interest in collecting any more data on this particular breed,” he said coolly. “What we’re interested in is what it knows. Seeing as you have the most detailed knowledge of both this breed and the personal history of the pack, we want you to question it.”

Stiles struggled to process what was going on here. “Question it” carried all sorts of unpleasant connotations with it, especially when coming from the mouth of Commander Argent. A black pit opened up in his stomach and threatened to eat him from the inside out. Or maybe he was just hungry; staring at that slime demon had made him lose his appetite for lunch.

“And what information in particular would that be?” he asked.

“The location of the rest of his pack. Get that from him, and your work is done.”

Stiles nodded tersely. "Whatever you say, sir.” Argent turned back to Allison and her squad.

"Bring them in," he ordered. "Dead or alive, it doesn't matter. We can't have another creature like that running wild on our doorstep."

"Yes, sir!" Allison shouted, saluting violently before stalking out the door. The rest of her squad fell into formation behind her. Argent's face soured, but he said nothing.

"You all have your assignments," he said, looking over at Lydia and Stiles. "Get to work." With that, he marched out of the room.

Lydia turned to Stiles. “Looks like Allison’s not too thrilled about something,” she said.

It took Stiles a moment to process that she was speaking to him. He was lost in his own little world of teeth and claws and metal tables, and various definitions of “questioning”. Only after Lydia snapped her fingers in his face did he look up suddenly and yank a smile up onto his face.

“Distracted much?” Lydia said.

“Sorry,” Stiles said. “I was just thinking about the ten hours of observation I have to look forward to.”

Lydia nodded. "And I have a corpse to inspect," she said. "What do you say that after we take care of our respective duties we meet up for some much-needed caffeine?"

Stiles grinned at that. "Is that a proposition I hear?"

"Yes. It's me propositioning that we go get some coffee, or in your case a chocolate milkshake."

"Don't dis the choc-tasto-blast with extra chocolate chips. It is ambrosia, nectar of the gods designed to drive our dentists to drink."

"I take it that's a yes," Lydia said with disinterest, inspecting her nails as if one of them would be anything less than perfectly manicured. "I'll see you then. Don't be late."

"You know me," Stiles said.

Lydia cocked an eyebrow. "Exactly. Don't be late."

With a haughty smile she turned and flounced out of the room. Lydia was an impressive actress, or at the very least, well-practiced at playing a bitch. But Stiles could see the way her eyes didn't quite shine with their usual gleeful malice, the way her hands kept smoothing down the front of her dress like a nervous tic. She was worried, and if Lydia Martin was worried that was good enough reason for Stiles to be panicking too.

However, this wasn’t the time or place for panic. He took a breath, then another, and turned to face the door. All of his other problems could wait until after he’d faced what was behind it.

He set to plugging in the various security codes. After practically singing the entirety of Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance" into the vocal sensor (don't judge), the air locks on the sides of the door popped open with a high-pitched hiss. The door swung open slowly on its own, like Stiles had stepped into a horror movie—or at least, a kind of fake-horror movie that he wasn’t already living in.

Stiles looked in on a long, dark room. Surprisingly enough, there were no guards. Well, based on what had happened last time Stiles guessed he could understand that. Lycanthropy was, essentially, a virus. The fewer people there were, the fewer people to spread it to.

He walked down the length of the room, passing a series of control boards as he neared the end. On the far side of the room was a pane of glass stretching from the floor to the ceiling. On the other side of the glass was a werewolf.

His—its, Stiles corrected himself—back was turned to the glass, but it twitched slightly as Stiles slowly walked forward. There were cuts and tears in the fabric of its jacket, which at one point had been a pretty badass leather number before someone had apparently put it through a wood chipper. There was blood on it too, although the slices of skin underneath had already healed.

Stiles pulled up a wheeled chair and sat down a few feet from the glass. An array of buttons, levers, and screens blinked and pulsed from the walls around him. He remembered every one. That green one there would pump gas into the room that would knock any HST out in five seconds flat; the striped lever would send an electrical current through the floor, ceiling and walls. There was a little nook about a foot wide that you could put things into, and they would be delivered directly into the cell through a gate in the ceiling. These prisons were built to contain anything short of a god, and according to HQ there were more than a few of those walking around these days. Against one werewolf, it should have been overkill in the extreme. But Stiles knew better than to underestimate them. He wouldn't make the same mistake twice, and apparently neither would HQ.

Stiles pulled out his tablet and did a quick internet search. The full moon was still a week away. Of course, chances were that this pack could change on command; they hadn’t stayed hidden for so long by going on monthly strolls in their finest furs. Stiles furrowed his brow and pinched his temples; when he looked up again, it was straight into the eyes of Derek Hale.

Stiles practically jumped out of his seat. The guy was standing right there, just a few inches from the glass. His breath made little clouds on the surface, and suddenly three inches didn't seem so thick anymore. His—no, its, damn it—face was humanoid and recognizable again, its hands decidedly lacking in deadly weaponry, and Stiles was surprised to see that its eyes were a hazel brown.

Stiles had read his file. A lot, actually. Derek was a sort of living legend around the Initiative, the one member of the Hale pack whose body was never recovered. Some people thought it had been lost in the fire, but the more superstitious (and when your job involved catching demons and werewolves, being superstitious definitely helped) whispered that Derek had escaped to go form a pack of his own, with plans to return later and begin the war anew. Looked like they'd been half right: Derek had been building his own pack. But if he had been planning on the whole grudge match deal, he'd certainly been taking his time. Stiles wondered vaguely why Derek hadn't done the smart thing and gotten as far away from Beacon Hills as possible.

Derek raised his hand to press a palm to the glass. Stiles figured he was probably communing with the wolf spirits for guidance or something like that, and toyed with the idea of giving him a shock just to fuck with him. But to his surprise, the werewolf spoke.

"I know you're in there," he said, and wow, props to the tech people because the sound system was crystal clear. It was like they weren't separated by three inches of fortified, shock-proof glass at all.

Stiles swallowed. He wasn't sure if this was an intimidation thing or what, because if it was, it was definitely working. But there wasn't really any malice in his voice.

"I don't know who you are," he continued, "but there are two things you should know. One, my pack and I have never hurt anyone. Two, if anything has happened to any of them, that's going to change."

"Excuse me while I tremble in my boots," Stiles muttered, though Derek couldn't hear him. Protocol demanded that all HSTs underwent ten hours of observation; Stiles would have the pleasure of sitting in this room for the next ten hours, doing or saying nothing, just watching the wolf pace. He sighed. For once, he was grateful. Whatever Chris Argent expected from him, it would have to wait. And maybe by the time Stiles had to stop hiding behind procedure, he would have figured something out one way or another.

 

* * *

 

Lydia made her way to the morgue as fast as she could without raising eyebrows. Werewolves resurfacing in Beacon Hills was definitely indicative of something, and whatever it was Lydia doubted it would be good. The last time they dealt with this breed had been the Hales, and that bloody campaign had produced enough bodies for Lydia to study for months. She didn't like to think about it, but then again no one did. With all of this activity, she just wanted was to retreat to the clinical silence of the morgue.

She knew that most people thought her strange and unapproachable. She hadn't exactly done much to dispel the rumors around her. Her morgue was her cathedral, a scalpel her scepter and her apron her robe. She was the one living person among the dead. In the morgue, she was God.

The Hale campaign had changed her. She sometimes still dreamed of slicing into the bodies, their faces too charred to identify (if she was lucky), line after line of cadavers that never seemed to end. She would wake up thinking that she was still back there, that all these years later the bodies were still coming.

But this was different. An unidentified species was lying on her table, or maybe an entirely new one. She wondered if she would get to name it.

Running through a list of potential species names as she went through the motions of swiping her card and offering voice and finger keys, Lydia breezed through the door of the morgue away from the bustle of people and into the still, cold air she was so familiar with. Sometimes people would come visit her here, like Allison or Stiles or a superior who was too impatient to wait for her lab report. All of them commented without fail that it smelled like all the flavor had been burned out of the air, but Lydia liked it. She knew that this was the cleanest air you would ever find anywhere, completely scrubbed of any potential pathogens or contaminants. It made her feel cleansed from the inside out.

Lydia stopped in front of a double-door metal closet and undid the line of locks running down it. Inside were her gloves, her apron, and an array of weaponry so impressive that even Allison would be jealous. The thing about working in a morgue where the supernatural crossed her table was that sometimes dead things had a tendency not to stay dead. But they certainly would when she was through with them. She slipped a belt from its holder and selected a .45, with silver bullets dipped in holy water and wolfsbane extract. You could never be too careful.

Her skin practically buzzed with excitement as she approached her table. On top lay a black bag that she had come to look forward to opening more than presents on Christmas. But first, there were procedures to take into account. She pulled out her tablet computer and read over the report that Allison's unit had sent in; apparently the creature was reptilian in appearance, notably with a tail and claws, and seemed to produce a clear, viscous substance that Allison had carefully collected and sent down with her. Lydia held up a vial of it, swirling the contents gently under the light. Probably poison, she decided. She hoped it did something fun.

All the formalities seen to, Lydia stepped up to the table and put a hand on the zipper. With a quick breath, she pulled the zipper open with a businesslike tug.

Something liquid spilled out as soon as the bag opened, gushing over the rim of the table to splatter on her shoes. She leapt back before it could touch her skin, grateful as always for her thick rubber gloves. She was ready to pull them off if the substance proved corrosive, but when nothing happened she carefully stepped back up to the table. She made a note to complain to Allison about letting her know when she was about to open a gooey surprise.

When she peered into the bag, though, she took in a sharp breath. It was filled with a clear sort of gel, but underneath it all there was a humanoid face. Lydia flicked through Allison's report again, but there was no mention that whatever they had shot had been anything other than inhuman. Fascinating. So it seemed they had bagged another shapeshifter after all. She was going to need to start recording her notes immediately from the looks of things.

After setting up her microphone, Lydia pulled out a scalpel.

"Subject is incased in a cocoon of sorts," she narrated, prodding the surface with her fingers. It yielded slightly to her hand, but seemed otherwise solid. "Material seems to be a form of hardened gel." She carefully slid her scalpel into the surface, cutting off a slice and putting it on a slide for later. She should probably go look at it now, but she was too excited to stop working.

"Switching to Liston knife," Lydia murmured, pulling out a larger number. She began carving the gel away from the creature's face, carefully avoiding the flesh as more and more of the stuff slid away. Eventually she got close enough that she began clearing it off with her hands, until the creature's face was free.

"Gel has been removed from the subject's facial area.” Now that she had a good look at it, she could conclusively say that whoever that face belonged to in life had been quite the looker. Death had treated him extraordinarily well, too. Some people were just lucky like that. Lydia sighed and reached for a towel. Of course, all the handsome men she met just happened to be dead on a table and waiting for her to cut them up. No wonder all her relationships were so dysfunctional.

She went through the usual steps: swabbed his cheeks for DNA in case he was in any of the databases that the Initiative had access to, also taking some skin and hair samples for good measure. When she peeled back his eyelid to photograph the irises, however, she was met by the second conclusive evidence that this creature was more than human. One iris was yellow and alien, the pupils slitted and reptilian, while the other remained human and blue.

With a sigh she leaned back and stared at the rest of the bag, still unzipped and presumably filled with more viscous gel. All of which would have to be cleared away for her to continue her analysis. She sighed and readjusted her gloves, then went for the biggest knife she could find.

Oh how she suffered for her craft.

 

* * *

 

Hour eight crept by, and Stiles was starting to feel not unlike a prisoner himself.

Normally, observation duty was a job that got pawned off onto the interns, just hours of boring note-taking and calling in someone else if anything interesting happened. But since Stiles was the local werewolf expert, the job fell to him. Glory, glory, Hallelujah.

Other than the initial threatening exchange, Derek was still and silent almost the entire time. Stiles had taken to humming show tunes under his breath, and then singing them loudly and obnoxiously. For some reason the room felt unbearably hot, which didn't make any sense because everything in the Initiative was carefully climate-controlled to a comfortable seventy degrees.

He took detailed notes on the subject’s movements, which was to say he wrote a paragraph on the HST’s single position before doodling pictures of rocket ships that ended up looking like penises no matter what he did. That wasn't to say that he wasn't paying attention. There was just very little to pay attention to.

When the nine-and-a-half-hour mark ticked by, Stiles nearly shit himself as the door slid open behind him and Chris Argent walked in.

"Any movement?" he said, staring at Derek. The werewolf sat cross-legged in the middle of the floor and stared straight into the glass like he could see both of them. Stiles had taken to making faces at him around hour three.

"None," Stiles responded, gesturing vaguely to the glass. Derek had pricked up slightly when Argent walked in, those freaky werewolf senses of his probably alerting him that Stiles was no longer alone. He didn't move or speak, though. Stiles had to admit he was impressed. Normally an HST broke within the first hour, pleading to be let go or threatening fire and brimstone. Derek hadn’t so much as glanced at the glass. Stiles couldn't help but admire his perseverance.

Argent squeezed his shoulder in a way that was maybe meant to be reassuring but mostly just cut off Stiles’s blood circulation.

"You've done well," he said. "It's been a long night for all of us, and I need you at the top of your game. Go get some sleep, and in the morning I want you to begin your interrogation. You have clearance to use any means you deem fit. This is all completely off the record, you understand. There will be no security cameras recording you, all notes should be burned." He frowned. “Not everyone agrees with our methods here Stiles, but I promise you they are necessary ones. Can I count on you?”

Stiles swallowed. “Yes, sir.”

Argent nodded. “Kate taught you well. One way or another, a week from today I’m transferring you and Hale to the Pit. If you can’t get it out of him here, I know you will there.”

"Yes, sir," Stiles said, scrambling out of his chair and hopefully masking his enthusiasm to get the fuck out of that tiny room. Argent turned back to the glass, a thoughtful expression on his face.

Stiles paused in the doorway when he saw the Commander wasn’t coming."Sir?" he asked. Argent glanced at him.

"I'll be along shortly, Stiles," he said quietly. "Feel free to head out without me."

Even though Stiles was pretty sure this was beginning of some brand of trouble or another, he was not about to stay in that room for a second longer. If Argent wanted to hash out the family history with the Hales, that was his own business.

Lydia was already waiting for him, standing with her back pointedly turned to the Pit. When she saw Stiles approaching she came out to greet him; her eyes looked tired, but he figured he wasn't in much better shape.

"Did I say that I loved new arrivals?" Lydia asked darkly, pressing her fingers to her forehead in exasperation as she fell into step. "I changed my mind. I hate new arrivals."

"Hear hear," Stiles agreed. "The first day is always the worst. It's nothing but slogging through grunt work. Just think of all the fun you'll have tomorrow, slicing and dicing like our own Jack the Ripper."

"Please," Lydia scoffed. "What I do has technique. It's practically an art. I don't ‘slice and dice’, I make explorations."

"You are one creepy kid," Stiles said fondly.

“Whatever you say, wolf boy.”

Stiles moved his hand as if he was about to muss up her hair but thought better of it. Lydia might change her mind about the slicing and dicing if Stiles messed up her hair. She swung to a stop in front of the locker room before dragging him in after her.

“I need to drop off my lab coat,” she explained.

Lydia's locker was immaculate, organized to the level usually associated with serial killers. Everything was color-coded and carefully placed, down to the flower-shaped magnets she had arranged on the door.

"Hey." Lydia's voice sounded distant as she leaned into her locker and plucked something off the floor. Stiles sidled back up and craned his neck to see what it was; a piece of paper was nestled in her hand with untidy handwriting. Just as Stiles was leaning in to read what it said Lydia's fist closed over it like a steel trap and she stuffed it into her pocket without a word.

"Hold on, what's it—Gnah." Stiles was cut off by an exquisitely sharp heel jammed into his foot, and Lydia caught his arm to keep him from squirming.

"How about we go to Sadie's?" she suggested brightly. "I could go for a milkshake."

"Narrgh," Stiles replied, still biting back a howl. He was about to give Lydia some very choice adjectives about her actions when he saw the look in her eyes. And damn, that was not a look you wanted to fuck around with. Nor was it one she donned lightly. Swallowing his pain and giving a tight nod, he allowed Lydia to walk him to the elevator until he could manage to stop walking like a peg-legged pirate.

Lydia filled the silence with idle chit-chat which Stiles responded to with equally vacuous enthusiasm as they shot to the surface. Whatever was going on, clearly Lydia wanted to talk about it where prying ears and eyes couldn't see.

It was a short, quiet walk from the vet's office to Sadie’s. The sun was just starting to come up when Stiles and Lydia stepped through the door. Luckily the place was open 24-7, so the wait staff practically knew the pair by name. Although they generally hated them, since they would come in and monopolize the booth for hours after ordering a single milkshake each.

But it wasn't just the joint's "World Famous" Caffinator (We'll TERMINATE Your Tiredness!) that had Stiles and Lydia coming back. The building was ancient, one of the first that had ever been built in Beacon Hills, and something about the wiring and the walls made it impractical and expensive for the Initiative to bug it. There were few places in town where the eyes and ears of HQ couldn't reach, and a little table tucked behind a potted plant near the back of the diner was one of them. An anti-bugging device Stiles had stuck under the table on a wad of glue certainly helped. It wasn't like Stiles, Allison and Lydia were conspirators or anything; it was just nice to get off the grid once in a while. And hey, maybe they conspired sometimes. Just a little.

They settled into their chairs, ignoring a pointed glare from the waitress as Lydia pulled out the note. They traded a glance as her nimble fingers unfolded it and her eyes darted over the words printed there. Stiles had no idea what could possibly be so important or secretive that Lydia would have them get off the grid just to read the thing.

"Well?" Stiles hissed, twisting to try and read the note upside down. "What does it say?"

Lydia's eyes flicked over the paper a few more times before she handed it to him without a word. Stiles snatched it up and scanned it three, four times.

"Uh, Lydia," he said. "Are you forgetting the fact that I can't read Old Latin?"

"Oh, right." The piece of paper whisked back to Lydia's side of the table as she drew out a purple gel pen. "Sorry, I sometimes forget that not everyone is as awesome as I am."

"Yeah, yeah, hurry it up," Stiles murmured, his fingers twitching as he watched her handwriting spill out over the paper scrap in flowing cursive. As soon as she was done, he snapped it out of her hands and read it anew:

 

_Do not read this note where others can see. Something is happening. On Thursday the 21st, stay home from work. Do not mention this note to another soul. Multiple lives depend on it. Destroy after reading._

 

He flipped it over. There was no signature, seal, or convenient anagram that might determine who sent the note. Just five enigmatic sentences and a burn order. Stiles sat back, mouthing the words silently like tasting them would help him understand. It didn't.

"So first order of business, what the hell," he said conversationally, dragging a hand across his brow. The capture of the legendary Derek Hale, a new species and mysterious notes; all of it fell under the category of "shit Stiles shouldn't have to deal with".

Lydia looked deep in thought, which usually was bad for someone in one way or another. She leaned back, staring at the scrap of paper like she could pick it apart with her eyes alone. Stiles tried a similar tactic with zero success, but kept his silence. It was best not to interrupt Lydia when she really got thinking if you knew what was good for you.

Finally her eyes flicked up, cool and calculating.

"Well?" Stiles prompted her. "Any ideas?"

Lydia looked at the note one last time. "A few theories. All of them implausible, none of them good."

"Go ahead and hit me," Stiles said. "Because I've got squat."

"Well, let's start with what we know. One, whoever left this note doesn't want us to know who they are. Two, whatever they're talking about is bad. The note is a warning. Three, this thing that's happening on the 21st has something to do with Derek Hale."

Stiles frowned. "One and two, I can see. But how does Derek figure into this? I mean yeah, he arrives and the note soon follows, but that could just be coincidence."

Lydia held up a finger. "True," she amended. "Except for the fact that whoever wrote this note wanted no one but us to know about it, especially the rest of the Initiative. That's why they told us to read it somewhere safe, and tell no one about it. Meaning that whatever's going down, it's nothing that HQ would like. Then of course, there's the most damning evidence of all."

Stiles leaned forward. "You're killing me, Lydia."

A smile broke out on her face. "The 21st is the night of the full moon."

Stiles let that sink in for a while, then waited a little longer. By the time he spoke Lydia's words had sunk deep into the silt of his brain and were worming towards the bedrock. "Ah." As an afterthought, he added, "Shit."

Lydia nodded. Stiles would have slammed a fist down on the table, if that didn't seem like the kind of melodramatic gesture that was bound to result in inconveniently bruised knuckles afterwards.

"God damn it," he said instead. "They should have known better than to take another Hale downstairs. Those people are bad news no matter how deep you bury them."

"Which begs the question, who would write us this note?" Lydia paused. "And why?"

"They care about us?" Stiles suggested. "Maybe they don't want us to get hurt. More likely it’s a prank, or someone knows about a surprise donut day and they’re eliminating the competition. Hey, can I see that again?"

Lydia slid him the note, and he squinted at the writing on it until his eyes watered.

"Whoever wrote it, they did it with their non-dominant hand," he decided, placing it back on the table. "That, or they got a four year old to write it. No fully-grown adult's penmanship is that bad. Meaning that if they had written it normally, they were afraid we'd recognize their handwriting. Not to mention they knew you'd be able to read Latin."

"Someone we know, then," Lydia decided. "That does make sense."

"Well, whoever they are they clearly don't know us all that well," Stiles said. "Otherwise they wouldn't have tried to hide their identity from the two most qualified geniuses in this town or under it."

"Two most qualified?" Lydia asked scornfully. "More like 'Most qualified and her runner up.'"

"Oh please. Who was it that beat you three separate times on the timed math quiz?"

Lydia's eyes narrowed. "Remind me. What were your SAT scores?"

Stiles stared her down for a moment before breaking away irritably. "Can we stop comparing our metaphorical dicks and start asking who out of everyone we know is fluent in Old Latin?"

Lydia sat back, a satisfied smile on her face. "Not fluent," she corrected. "I took some liberties with my translation. The original text is riddled with grammatical errors."

"Well, once we find out who they are, you offer them tutoring sessions," Stiles said. "Still, how many people could we possibly have as suspects?"

"More than you'd think. Many of the texts we use as reference in the research department are written in it."

Stiles sighed. "Great," he muttered. "So what do we do, then?"

Lydia tapped her nails on the cracked plastic tabletop. "For now, we wait. Follow any leads that come up, but don't be obvious about it. We'll meet back here tomorrow and compare notes."

"Awesome." Stiles couldn't help but grin. "This is pretty cool, isn't it? Like we're in some kind of spy novel or something."

Lydia tilted her head, her lips twitching. “If we were in a spy novel, then you might actually have a chance of getting laid.”

“Can we not talk about this?” Stiles groused. “You’re always bothering me.”

“Fine, fine,” she said. Her face grew more serious. “Why don’t you tell me about the legendary Derek Hale?”

Stiles’s eyes widened. “How did you kno—right, you and your freakin’ classified information,” he grumbled. “I never get to do the dramatic reveals.”

“But you did just spend ten hours staring at the guy. So what was he like?”

"I don't know," Stiles said, suddenly and inexplicably uncomfortable. "He just sits there the whole time. Although he did threaten my life within two minutes of me walking into the observation area."

Lydia's eyes widened. "You turned off the two-way glass?"

"No, he just knew I was there somehow. I guess he heard me or something." Stiles frowned. "Derek's been a werewolf much longer than any of the others; he's had much more time to explore his powers, get better at using them. Not to mention the fact that he's a werewolf by birth. Compared to the bite, there's no contest of power."

Lydia propped her chin up on her fist. "You sound almost reverent," she said.

Stiles shrugged. "I guess I am, a little bit. Werewolves have been living alongside humanity since before we were scratching pictures in the dirt. They taught us to fear the dark, but to fear the full moon more. And after so many years of technological development, we still can't seem to stamp them out. They're closer to human than any other creature we deal with here, and that makes them the most dangerous." He shook his head. "I guess you can think of it like you might think of a shark. Like, props to you shark, you've survived for millions of years without so much as changing. That's either extreme laziness on evolution's part, or proof that if it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Lydia smiled. "Argent picked the right man for the job. You understand them well."

“Yeah, well,” Stiles muttered, toying with a piece of lint in his pocket self-consciously. “Maybe I’m not as qualified as he might think.”

Lydia frowned. “What are you talking about?”

“He wants me to get information out of Derek about where the rest of his pack is hiding.” Stiles sighed. “‘Using any means necessary.’ And it’s worse: no matter what, in a week he’s sending Derek to the Pit. And guess who’s going to be escorting him there.”

Her eyes lowered. “Oh.”

Stiles snorted mirthlessly. “Yeah. Oh. Glad to know that my hard work has paid off with a reputation as head torturer.”

“You aren’t a torturer, Stiles,” Lydia said sharply. “You never were, no matter what Kate tried to make you. I’m sure that whatever happens, you’ll figure out some other way of getting Derek to open up to you.”

“Yeah.” Stiles swallowed. “Can we talk about something else? I know you're dying to tell me all about your new toy. Have you stolen his heart yet, or are you still working on his kidneys?"

After a moment Lydia leaned back, reluctantly letting the subject drop. "To tell you the truth, I'm a bit disappointed," she said. "By the time I got to him he had already reverted back to his original, human form. It's going to take a long time now to figure out what exactly he was."

Stiles nodded. "But you'll do it."

She smiled in response. "Yes, I will. Eventually. Never let it be said that I don't like a challenge."

"Do you think I could come get a look at one of the last werewolves of Beacon Hills sometime?" Lydia asked, eating a spoonful of whipped cream off the top of her milkshake.

"Sure, if you feel like spending half an hour in a tiny room being doused with Purell. I can guarantee your hair won't survive the trip without significant casualties. Besides, do you even have clearance?"

"I think you're forgetting again that I outrank you," Lydia said smoothly.

Stiles groaned. "Like you would ever let me. Still, if you don't want the safari experience you can always just come take another peek on the monitors."

Lydia nodded. "I'd like that. Always one to witness history in the making."

Stiles rubbed his eyes. "Sounds like a plan. Sleep first, though. I'd fall asleep right here if I wasn't afraid of the nightmares your hideous face would give me."

“Whatever you have to tell yourself.”

 

* * *

 

Stiles woke up the next morning feeling predictably like shit. He went through the motions of getting ready, splashing some water on his face, rubbing some toothpaste on his teeth with a finger because he couldn't find his brush, trying to pick out clothes that at least didn't directly contradict each other. When he met up with Lydia on the corner of their block he wasn't surprised to see she looked as immaculate as ever; except for the fact that she was sporting a pair of zombie-eyes.

They made their way to the vet's without saying much, just soaking in the mutual air of early-morning misery. As Stiles stepped into the elevator with her and felt the familiar slide of it into the earth he felt his heart start to beat faster. Today he’d start the questioning. Could anyone blame him for sleeping badly? He never slept well before testing, and this time it was werewolves. Stiles didn't exactly have a tight moral code, but even this pricked at it slightly.

Stiles stood there with his mouth open for a few seconds before scrambling for the microphone. He was afraid that if he didn't do something he'd just stand there staring indefinitely.

"Uh." He fumbled with the button that allowed himself to be heard, feeling like every possible introduction had been scrubbed clean from his mind. This was Derek fucking Hale, what could you possibly say that would make you sound cool to him? And why did Stiles care, goddamnit?

"Hey. How's it going?" Stiles winced. Smooth. Real smooth. Derek's neck had snapped up at the first crackle of static, and now he was just standing there with an expression of incredulity. Eventually he stepped forward, peering through the glass like he could somehow see through it if he brooded hard enough. Stiles resisted the urge to hide behind a chair.

"Okay," Derek said, his voice smooth. "Let me guess. Someone left the door unlocked and someone dared the local intern to go talk to the scary werewolf." His eyes... didn't flash, exactly, but the effect was the same. "Why don't you go find someone I can talk to who’s already moved out of their mother’s basement?"

Stiles ground his teeth, partially shocked into silence. So not only was Derek attractive, he was also a fucking asshole. Go figure. Stiles rubbed his hands together and pressed the comm button. He was more than willing to play ball.

"Sorry, Derek, I'm all you're going to get," he said, drawing from a well of inexhaustible and largely false confidence. "So I suggest you and I start getting cozy, because we're going to be seeing a lot of each other from now. Or," He paused. "Well, I'm going to be seeing. You, not so much."

Derek smirked. Actually smirked. Did the bastard not know that Stiles could kill him ten different ways from Sunday with a few carelessly flipped buttons?

"So you know who I am." His face looked vaguely amused, his eyebrows raised, his mouth suppressing an insolent smile. He tucked his hands behind his back and began to pace, his eyes still piercing the glass and nearly finding Stiles with disturbing accuracy. "Do I get your name too?"

Stiles leaned forward. "I kind of like this better, actually," he said. "I like having you at a disadvantage, big boy." Oh shit. He winced and smacked himself in the forehead as soon as he released the comm button. He had not meant for it to sound like that. Why was his confidence mode always weirdly sexual? But Derek seemed to take it in stride.

"What do I call you, then?" he asked. Stiles thought about this. He had to come up with something really cool. This was practically like designing his own superhero alias, and yeah, making that comparison was probably not the best way to come up with a nickname that wasn't lame.

Stiles drew himself up proudly. "You may call me," he said, interjecting an air of haughtiness, "the Puppeteer."

Derek was silent for a long time. "That," he said finally, "is the stupidest thing I've ever heard."

"Hey, it's a work in progress," Stiles said defensively.

"You know who you remind me of?" Derek said, interrupting his thoughts as Stiles had been silent too long. "That guy from _Big Bang Theory_. What's his name? Like Lenny or something? Yeah. You remind me of Lenny."

"First of all it's Leonard, and second of all I'm much more like Sheldon," Stiles said. Derek just smiled a smile that Stiles couldn't describe as anything other than wolfish. But over those glinting teeth, his eyes were cold and calculating.

"So then, Lenny," he said pointedly. "Do you want to tell me where I am right now?"

Stiles smiled to himself, eager for the balance of power to shift back to him. "You don't need to worry about that right now."

Derek shook his head with a quiet snort. "Man," he said, "I have to admit. After spending so much time and effort keeping under the radar, I'm actually pretty disappointed. I thought the Initiative would be much more badass."

Stiles ground his teeth. "Buddy, I've got a whole row of buttons in here that would seriously change your mind on that."

Derek shrugged. "I'm sure you do. But that won't change the fact that the Initiative’s head interrogator is apparently a nerdy wimp too chicken-shit to give me his name."

" 'Head Interrogator'?" Stiles said incredulously. "Please. I am a man of science."

"So I got the nerdy part right, then," Derek said.

"Lucky guess."

There was a pause, and Derek crossed his arms, sizing up whoever he thought was on the other side of the glass. Stiles cleared his throat.

“Well now, Derek,” Stiles said conversationally. “How about we talk about where the rest of your back is currently setting up base?”

The werewolf twitched subconsciously, his gaze sharpening. Still he didn’t say anything, his jaw twitching as it set like concrete. Clearly he thought that sharing and caring time was over. Stiles bit the inside of his cheek.

“Look, you can either sit around making angry eyes and brooding in a corner all day, or we can have ourselves an actual conversation. Maybe we can work something out.”

Derek paused, and Stiles could practically see the gears turning in his mind. This was a smart one, alright. Stiles had worked with plenty of HST’s at this point in his career, and most of them didn’t have the benefit of carrying on a decent conversation; let alone trying to outsmart him. It was refreshing, really.

Eventually Derek seemed to come to a decision. “What did you have in mind?” he asked.

Stiles smiled. "Tell you what. I'll answer your questions if you answer mine. For every question I answer, you have to answer one too. I'll even go first. Sound fair?"

Derek paused, crossing his ridiculous arms over his chest and glaring through the glass. A pouty brood seemed to be what his face naturally inclined to. For the record, he wore it well.

Eventually he gave a stiff nod. "Fine. I'll play."

"Good boy," Stiles said with a grin.

Derek's frown deepened. "How many of us have you taken?"

"Just you, bucko," Stiles said. It wasn't really a lie, after all; whatever was lying in the belly of the morgue wasn't a werewolf, and therefore wasn't technically part of the pack. "My turn. How did you and your pack stay hidden from us for so long?"

Derek shrugged. "You weren't looking. We kept our heads down. It really wasn't hard."

"That's a vague answer," Stiles said sourly.

"It was a vague question. My turn. Where is the rest of my pack?"

"In California," Stiles retorted. When Derek looked pissy, Stiles laughed. "What? It was a vague question."

"If you want this to work, I suggest you hold up your end," Derek grumbled. Stiles held up his hands even though Derek couldn't see him.

"Alright, alright. They all escaped capture,” Stiles said. “Speaking of which, how many of you guys are there anyways?”

“Three,” Derek said quickly.

“Are you lying?” Stiles asked.

“It’s my turn to ask the questions,” Derek said. “How far underground are we?”

Stiles shrugged. “Few hundred feet, give or take. I’m telling you that so you know how hopeless your chances of escape are. Alright, here’s one: why did you come back to Beacon Hills?"

"I never left." Derek laughed as the silence dragged on from Stiles’s end. "What? Surprised at your own organization's incompetence? This town is my home. I couldn't leave."

"Territory," Stiles muttered, not bothering to press the comm button. Once a wolf staked out its territory it was bound to that area, not by anything magical but just by pure instinct. It would leave if something drove it away, but apparently not if there was something seriously compelling to keep it there.

"How long are you going to keep me here?"

Stiles considered whether he should lie or not. In the end, he settled on a half-truth. "As long as necessary," he said. It sounded so much nicer than "forever". Something told him Derek knew what the deal was, but he just wanted to make him say it.

Derek smiled mirthlessly. “And what are you planning on doing to me?”

Stiles leaned back in his chair. “That depends on you,” he said. “My superiors are mostly interested in taking the rest of your pack into custody; and that’s an eventuality, not a possibility. Your cooperation would speed up the process, however, and make them a lot more sympathetic to all of you.”

“And why would I want their sympathy?”

“Because they can kill you by flipping a button,” Stiles said dryly. “And if you help them, maybe they won’t.”

Derek seemed to think about it. “And what about you?” he said. “All this talk about your bosses, but what do you want?”

“I want to survive,” Stiles replied. “Which wouldn’t be too bad of a goal for you to consider either. For your sakes and mine.”

Raising his eyebrows, Derek shook his head. “Sounds like you have it pretty rough, Lenny.” Stiles didn’t miss the irony in his voice.

"Dude, please don't call me Lenny," He said, resigning the illusion. "My name is Stiles."

"Stiles." It felt weirder than weird to hear Derek Hale, badass werewolf urban legend, tasting his name like it was some kind of foreign fruit. "That sounds even more fake than 'Lenny'."

"It's a nickname," Stiles said. "If I told you my real name you definitely wouldn't believe me."

"The fact that you're still willing to let people call you that is either impressive or pathetic," Derek commented drily. Stiles shrugged.

"Is it too much to ask for both?" he joked. Derek's mouth twitched into something resembling a smile. Stiles found himself paying far too much attention to that motion than he probably should have.

Pity that the most interesting guy he’d met in a while was an HST.

 

* * *

 

When Lydia returned to the morgue the cocoon was almost fully reassembled. She had only been gone for an hour. Without a doubt the replacement rate on the gel was steadily increasing. With a frown she set to clearing away the new growth, sloughing it off into a bin marked "Biohazard" that would undoubtedly go straight to the incinerator. As far as Lydia could tell, the gel was largely harmless; although the compound Allison had sent her revealed traces of a paralytic (so much more interesting than poisons), the post-mortem production, although visually similar, lacked any obvious toxins. That didn't mean Lydia was about to start rubbing it all over her face, though.

She was just clearing the last of the gel off the specimen's chest when suddenly she realized something. Wheeling the cart with a light and magnifying glass over, she inspected a patch of skin that looked decidedly not like human skin should. Sure enough, a pattern of scales had started forming just under the surface of the skin where the gel had been the thickest. Her heart beating faster, Lydia soon discovered that the fingernails had begun reverting to their claw-like shape, and the one eye with a human iris had also begun shifting towards a more yellow tint, the pupil stretching into something sharper.

"Fascinating," she breathed.

 

* * *

 

When Stiles peeled himself off his couch after four hours of sleep and trudged his way back to work, he barely made it two steps out of the elevator before Lydia ambushed him.

“Stiles,” she said, linking her arm into his. He stared down at it suspiciously.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“Oh, nothing. You’re just going to show me your shiny new toy,” she said with a smile.

Stiles sighed. “And I guess I don’t have a choice in this matter?”

“Superior officer’s orders,” Lydia said brightly.

Lydia didn't seem altogether impressed when they stepped into the observation room. It struck Stiles that she might have been here plenty of times before. He wondered what sorts of things HQ had her doing that she wasn't allowed to talk about.

Derek was pacing back and forth now, occasionally stopping to run his hands over the walls. Lydia watched him for a long minute.

"He's hot," she eventually proclaimed. Stiles stared at her in disbelief.

"Uh, Lydia, what were you saying less than eight hours ago about not sleeping with the inmates?" Stiles said shrilly. Lydia shot him a wolfish grin.

"Slime monsters are one thing. Don't try and tell me you didn't think that too when you saw him."

"Uh, I definitely haven't," Stiles protested, but Lydia just laughed.

"Hey look, he's taking his jacket off." They stood in silent for a minute, eyes glued to the screen. "Wow."

Stiles was inclined to agree. "I think you need a weapons permit to be carrying guns that big," he said distantly. Lydia snorted.

"Oh, and now he's working out," Lydia commented.

"This is so beyond creepy," Stiles whispered, but he couldn't tear his eyes away as Derek did angry, restless pushups. The sleeveless t-shirt was definitely not helping matters.

"He's not even a person," Stiles insisted. "Just person shaped. Very well-formed person-shamed."

"Then why do you feel so guilty for playing peeping tom?" Lydia shot back. Stiles didn't have an answer to that.

When Lydia made her way back to the morgue muttering about slide samples and ion-detecting pigment, Stiles hovered outside of the door. He should go see Derek. He was supposed to see Derek. For the interrogating and stuff. After all, it was his job. He didn't want to anymore. But there was something he needed from Derek. Oh god, now he was making creepy innuendos in his own skull. Why had he thought it was a good idea to bring Lydia Martin in with him?

He rubbed his palms over his short hair in agitation, then drew himself up and marched through the door. When Stiles next came in to the observation room, Derek was still doing push ups.

For a normal person, that would have involved lifting their body off the ground using the strength of their arms and back. Simple enough, really. But with Derek, it was like watching the physical incarnation of angst pump itself off the floor. He’d taken off his tattered leather jacket, leaving nothing more than an obscenely tight sleeveless shirt and rippling, glorious muscles. Stiles shook himself. Keep it together, man.

He approached the glass and paused for a second longer before averting his eyes and coughing pointedly. “I’m here now.”

Derek glanced up at the glass, pausing for a moment before returning to his angry exercising. Stiles laughed nervously.

“Come on, don’t you want to chat?”

“No. I’m busy.”

The silence dragged on. Finally, Stiles snapped.

“Can you please not do that?” he said. “It’s very distracting.”

This time Derek stopped in earnest, sliding back to his knees and staring through the glass with vague amusement. There was a sheen of sweat on his forehead and in the little half-circle just below his neck.

“I’m sorry,” he said scathingly. “Am I making you uncomfortable?”

“No,” Stiles said quickly. “I just… I have questions, you know. Thought we’d get into it.”

“Later,” Derek grunted. With that, he got back to his push-ups.

Stiles ground his teeth and pointedly swiveled his chair around so he was staring at the back wall. He was tempted to walk out and come back when Derek wasn’t feeling like such a douchebag, but that sounded a bit too much like admitting defeat. He knew he should push the issue, play this game on his own terms, but he also thought that might take him in a direction he wasn’t ready to go. So instead he sat there listening to Derek’s breathing, and hating himself.

“Alright,” Derek said at last, and when Stiles turned around he was sitting cross-legged on the floor and pushing his hair back from his forehead. “I’m ready.”

“Are you sure?” Stiles retorted. “Do you want to take a shower first? Maybe braid your hair?”

“Ask your question,” Derek said.

Stiles sighed. “I’ll start out easy. How many people have you killed?”

Scratching the side of his neck, Derek looked unimpressed. “None,” he said. “I’ve never killed anyone.”

Stiles stared at him. “Bullshit.”

“You don’t have to believe me, but it’s true. Sorry if that doesn’t fit in with your conveniently black and white opinions about werewolves. How many guards are there outside of my cage?”

"None. But enough automatic weaponry to vaporize you if you so much as blink wrong,” Stiles snapped. “Who else survived the fire?"

Derek flinched, but to his credit his face stayed blank. "Just Peter and I, and as you know he’s dead. Unless there's something you want to tell me."

The thin note of hope in Derek's voice made something painful flare up in Stiles’s chest, but he swallowed it down. "'Fraid not," he said lightly. "The only thing that came down here afterwards had been scraped off the ground. Our people and yours both."

"Did you lose someone?" Derek's eyes were piercing, or seeking something to pierce.

“Yes,” Stiles said after a moment. He paused for effect. “Myself,” he finished, throwing the back of his hand over his forehead dramatically. Derek couldn’t see him, but presentation was still important. Derek, shockingly, looked unimpressed.

“Tough crowd,” Stiles said.

“Sorry, I guess having your people butcher and burn my entire family before I was even a legal adult put a bit of a damper on my appreciation of humor.”

“Hey, don’t go acting like that was in any way my fault. I’m just some guy who works for them.”

“Right,” Derek said bitterly. “And that’s the reason that you’re the guy they have trying to wring all these secrets out of me. Because you’re just ‘some guy’.”

“Actually,” Stiles said, “They picked me because Kate Argent trained me, and they figured that once she was through me with at least a few useful things must have stuck.”

If anything Derek’s face looked even more disgusted. “Kate Argent’s protégé?” he spat.

“Not by choice,” Stiles said. “Once Kate Argent takes an interest in you, you don’t really get a say.”

Derek’s fingers twisted into the dirty fabric of his jeans. “Yeah,” he said. “I know.”

Stiles raised his eyebrows. “You know? That’s not the kind of information they publicize.”

“I knew her,” Derek said tightly. Then, “She killed my sister.”

“Yeah, well, lots of people died in the conflict,” Stiles replied, a bit callously. “And Kate was right on the frontlines. Figures she’d have gotten a few shots in.”

“This wasn’t in the fire,” Derek said, leaning forward. “This was before all that. Before any of the fighting started.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Stiles scoffed. “The first casualties were the ones who went down when your people attacked us.”

“And what, you never thought to ask why we suddenly got violent?” Derek snarled. “Well, here’s a history lesson for you: in the dead of the night, Kate Argent took her sniper rifle, snuck through the woods outside our house, and put a wolfsbane bullet in my sister’s brain. We were all playing Scrabble at the time.”

“That’s impossible,” Stiles said flatly.

Derek scoffed. “If you really knew Kate Argent, you know it’s not. If you’re looking for someone to blame for this mess, you can address your concerns to her grave.”

Stiles sat there silently for a while.

“Wow,” he said at last, running a hand through his short hair. “I mean. Wow. I never knew.”

Derek’s face didn’t soften—Stiles doubted it even had that capacity—but he did stop looking like he wanted to tear Stiles’s throat out. “She wouldn’t have exactly flaunted it,” he said. “Besides. It sounds like you had a pretty rough time yourself.”

“You could say that.”

Derek paused. “What happened, exactly?” he asked, his tone careful and his eyes calculating.

Stiles knew this was probably a ruse to expose his weaknesses, get him to open up, but still he found himself talking.

“It was, uh, a few months after I joined. Kate saw that I had taken a specific interest in lycanthropy, and decided to broaden my knowledge base. She brought me along to her sessions and had me stand by while she ripped into them.” Stiles’s skin felt cold and damp, and he ran his hands over his face with a nervous laugh.

“Jesus. Why am I telling you this?” When he looked up he expected Derek’s face to be mocking, triumphant that he’d gotten Stiles to spill his guts on something so obviously personal. But instead, his eyes were dark and looked years older than they had before.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and it sounded honest. He was doing that thing where he somehow managed to look directly at the place where Stiles was sitting, and Stiles looked away.

“Thanks,” he addressed to the floor. “And you know. Sorry as well. For your thing.”

Derek was quiet. As soon as Stiles thought he wasn’t going to speak again, he looked up.

“So. What’s your favorite book?”

Stiles smiled in spite of himself. “Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

He sighed. “A Song of Ice and Fire, probably. I’m a sucker for political intrigue.” The tense silence dissolved around them as Derek smirked, obviously biting back a comment about Stiles’s predictably nerdy choice in literature. Stiles didn’t really care. He leaned back in his chair and laced his hands behind his head.

“Alright. What’s yours?”

 

* * *

 

Stiles took a lunch break from his conversation with Derek (oh god, they were having conversations now), and set to mulling over all the ways he was the world’s worst interrogator. So far Derek had probably learned more from him than the other way around. Of course, Commander Argent hadn’t picked him for his skills in chit-chat.

Lost in his thoughts, he hardly noticed Lydia slide into the chair across from him until she slammed her tray down on the table with a clatter. She smiled sweetly to his annoyed glance.

"How are things?" she said, pointedly not specifying the things in question. Stiles shot her an annoyed look.

"Things are fine," he said. "How are your things?"

"Gel-y," Lydia decided after a moment, taking a loud bite out of an apple. "You remember the gel cocoon I was telling you about earlier? Well somehow the cadaver is still producing it, to the point where I have to keep clearing it off or let it close over the subject again. But in other news, my slides finished percolating. So with any luck, pretty soon I'll be able to tell what exactly this stuff does."

"Good. That's good." Stiles didn't realize how distracted he was until Lydia flicked him on the nose.

"Stiles. Are you still with us here on planet Earth?"

"I'm fine, Lydia," he snapped.

She backed off, her eyes careful. "That isn't what I asked. But now that you mention it: Stiles, are you okay?"

Stiles sighed, slamming his fork down on the table with a little more force than he intended. "Lydia, this is hard for me, okay? Ever since Kate it's just been bad. And I thought all that was over with, nope, no more werewolves in Beacon Hills, when suddenly Derek Hale drops out of the sky into my lap and I just don't know what to do with him. So I guess I'll just do what I'm told. Like always."

He noticed that Lydia was glancing around, her movements tight and cautious, and he realized that maybe talking loudly about his problems with authority in the middle of a highly secretive military operation was not the best of plans.

"Sorry," he said, rubbing his forehead. "I was talking to Derek today. He's actually a pretty cool guy. You hear me, Lydia? I'm calling him a guy. Not a thing, not a creature, a guy. Meaning that a few days from now I am going to strap a guy to a table and cut him open to show him his insides--" Stiles choked on the end of his sentence, struggling to breathe.

"Stiles," Lydia said sharply. He buried his head in his hands, and Lydia's fingers hovered over him uncertainly.

"It's okay," she said quietly, ignoring the stares they were getting. "Stiles, it's okay. Do you need to go to the infirmary?" Stiles forced himself to suck some air into his lungs, clenching his hands so they wouldn't shake.

"I'm fine," he said. "All good now." Lydia offered him a sympathetic smile. "I've been on high alert for the past few days now. It just gets hard to do things sometimes."

Lydia seemed to come to a decision. "Stiles," she said firmly, "As your superior in the chain of command, I am ordering you to take a sick day. Go home, have a drink, and sleep for more than four hours. No buts," she said as Stiles opened his mouth to protest.

"But," he said pointedly, "Argent asked me to see to this Derek Hale situation--"

"Let Derek Hale stew for a little longer. Maybe you'll get more out of him that way. I'm not going to watch you destroy yourself over some stupid Furbie, Stiles."

Stiles sighed. "Alright, alright. But if I get in trouble, you are taking the fall for this."

"As always," she purred. Stiles smiled in response. Of course if Lydia actually got in trouble for this, Stiles would be first in line to throw himself under the bus for her. Both of them knew that. It didn't need to be said. He patted her on the shoulder and stood up, the promise of a soft bed proving more and more enticing.

"Thanks, Lydia," he said, leaning down to kiss the top of her head fondly. She shooed him away, patting her hair to make sure it stayed in place.

"Go," she said. "Have enough good dreams for the both of us."

 

* * *

 

Stiles had been sleeping on the couch for the past few nights. He wasn't sure why, but it made him feel safer somehow. He rarely had any dreams when he was scrunched up into the most uncomfortable position known to man, his neck bent forward and his knees pulled partially to his chest so that no piece of him was hanging off. He would unroll a musty blanket that had been lying on the arm of the sofa for too long and curl up with a marathon of _Gilmore Girls_ on as background noise. This time, though, he headed for the bed.

By now it was around five PM, but it could have been 3am or noon and Stiles wouldn't have noticed. A wacky sleep schedule was just one more side-effect of working for a secret agency that operated underground. He collapsed over the covers, grabbing the edge and turning over so he was rolled up in a fold. He could feel his vertebrae shifting and creaking as they enjoyed the benefits of good back support.

As soon as he closed his eyes, the real trouble started.

You know how you can be sure when a werewolf isn't healing anymore, Stiles? You have to go down to the bones. You gotta clear the meat away like this, see, watch how I'm doing it. Then you get your forceps, hold 'em like this, and make sure you get a good arm behind them. Then you push. Oh, oops, sometimes you gotta do it a few times. There we go. It's easier when you can wear a pair of ear plugs, I know all this yowling always gives me a headache. Now, watch the bone. If a werewolf is healing you can actually see the fibers start to knit themselves back together. If not, well, tough luck for Fido, but you're good to start the procedure. See, here you can tell, this one's not healing anymore. Now hand me that scalpel and I'll show you what to do.

You okay, Stiles? You're looking a bit peaky.

Stiles woke up. He didn't sit bolt upright in bed. He didn't cry out or thrash around, or run to the bathroom and stare at his reflection before doing something dramatic like popping some pills or shaving his hair. He just opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling and wondered why this had happened to him.

If you had asked him what the best thing that had happened to him, was he would have easily told you that realizing that the supernatural was real, that demons and ghosts and werewolves weren't just something in his imagination. Every kid wants to believe in magic. Stiles didn't much care for magic; he just wanted something more. And then he found out that there was more, and it sucked just as bad as the rest of real life did. He wished he could be surprised. It seemed to be his lot in life.

He twisted his neck to look at the clock: it was 1am. There was no going back to sleep anymore, and Lydia had banned him from showing his face at work for at least 10 hours (and he wouldn't put it past her to make the elevator reject his vocal signature just to make sure he didn't try to sneak back), so he collapsed back in bed with a groan.

For some reason Stiles found himself thinking about Derek. Not in a "oh, I don't want to hurt you" kind of way, even. He just thought about Derek, wondered where he and his pack had been living all these years, wondered what his favorite food was. He realized that Derek could have lived in an apartment, or maybe even rented a house with the pooled funds of the pack. He would have made scrambled eggs in the morning, or maybe he was a night person-- maybe he got restless and made chocolate chip pancakes at 3am. He lay in bed thinking about Derek Hale as a person, and what his life must have been like. Maybe he had just wanted to be normal like Stiles just wanted to be special, and found out that it was just as shitty as Stiles had discovered.

And the, as was inevitable, his mind turned to the fire. After the Hales launched an assault on the base and turned it into a feeding frenzy of loose monsters and scattered gunshot, retaliation was no longer a question. They weren’t soldiers and scientists anymore; they were a mob, and when the first of chem department’s fire bombs blasted through the first story windows of the Hale house, there was no one questioning whether what they were doing was right. They soon found out that the house was empty, though. Someone must have suggested that they light a few fires to smoke them out. An hour later and the whole forest was burning.

Stiles hadn’t been there himself, but he had seen it all through the security feed. Then he’d sat there reviewing the tapes, over and over, under orders to see if anyone had gotten out alive. You can only watch someone burn to death so many times before something inside you crumples, and by the end of it Stiles was a wreck. He remembered the Pit as a swath of bright light and reflective foil, a series of organic sounds and smells and cool, hard metal. More often than not he tried not to remember.

And then, of course, there was Kate. Kate, whose creative methods of inquiry failed to turn up any conclusive evidence of any more survivors from the fire. Who, when HQ refused to sanction any more recon missions, disappeared to hunt for the remaining pack herself. A few months later she turned up in the ashes of the Hale house with Peter Hale, both of them dead from claws and bullet wounds, respectively. No one was really surprised. Stiles never told anyone how the relief made him sag when he heard that particular news.

But all that was in the past now, and if he let himself start tumbling into that pit then he wouldn’t leave his house for a week. So he stood up, made himself some coffee, and showered until the water was blisteringly cold and his face was red and numb. He’d be fine, really. All it took was convincing yourself of it.

It was dark out, but he wasn’t tired and now seemed like a good a time as any to wade back into the fray. On a hunch, he headed to the cafeteria with the hopes of finding Lydia there. Sure enough, when he stepped into the cafeteria he saw her sitting by herself and staring intently at the leaves of one of the fake plants. Stiles sighed internally. He remembered the days before the Hales tore through this place when Lydia would be the center of attention. Ever since she had a hard time interacting with people without a Y of black stitching on their chests.

When she saw Stiles coming, however, she tossed away her leaf and broke into a smile.

"The dead walk," she commented as he slid into the seat across from her.

"Sorry I took more time off than I said I would," Stiles said.

"Please don't apologize for doing the thing I told you to do," Lydia said. "You look a lot better now."

"I feel better." Stiles scratched the back of his neck. "How about you?" Stiles asked, reaching over to snag her cup of coffee and take a swig. She liked it black, and Stiles instantly regretted his decision.

"Oh, I'm glad you asked!" Lydia cried. "I've had a big breakthrough on the subject they brought in with your werewolf hunk. That gel cocoon I was talking about? Well, despite the fact that the subject is still conclusively deceased, what's under the cocoon is slowly reverting back to the reptilian state that Allison first described in her report. This is very exciting!"

"Sounds very disgusting," Stiles murmured. "But no, definitely exciting too. I'm happy for you.”

"Mmmhmmm." Lydia was looking at her watch intently, biting her lower lip thoughtfully until she tapped the face with a finger. "And that's our cue," she said, standing up and grabbing Stiles’s wrist to drag him with her.

"What's happening?" he asked, letting Lydia guide him back towards the elevators.

"Allison is off duty for sleep, which means she'll be up at Sadie's drinking a gallon of caffeine and not sleeping," Lydia explained. "We're going to ambush her and wring some information out."

"I'm not entirely comfortable with that imagery," Stiles protested, but he was already being maneuvered into the elevator. It was still dark when they stepped outside; at this point Stiles’s sense of time was shot to hell and back. He could step outside to find the sky had turned green and he'd be halfway to work before it hit him what was different.

They were just stepping out of the vet’s office when Lydia elbowed Stiles in the ribs. He opened his mouth to yell at her when suddenly her hand was sealing it shut. She nodded her head to the end of the corner just in time for Stiles to see a swath of dark hair disappearing around the side of a 7-11.

“Allison?” he muttered when Lydia released him. “So much for a caffeine transfusion.”

“Looks like she could use some fresh air,” Lydia said, but there was an edge of uncertainty in her voice. Stiles stared at her with wide eyes.

“Oh no, we are not—”

“Don’t be such a swooning maiden, Stiles, this is not normal behavior for her.”

“Ah man, Lydia, why does hanging around you always lead to spying of some sort?” But he followed as Lydia jogged up to the corner, where Allison had disappeared, her flats slapping against the concrete quietly.

When they peered around the corner they saw Allison hadn’t turned towards one of the busier streets of Beacon Hills, but instead was walking straight towards the edge of the trees that crowded up against the backs of the buildings. The dark trunks swallowed her up, her pale face a beacon for a second before that too dissolved. Lydia was out in a second, dragging Stiles after her by the wrist.

“She probably just has to take a piss,” he whispered helplessly in her wake. “Maybe she dropped an arrow or something! Lydia!”

“Oh fine,” she snarled, flinging his hand away. “Sit here and moan about it if you’d rather. I’m following her.”

Stiles watched as the redhead ducked through the branches, her feet shifting the leaves with a gentle rustling. He wavered on the edge of the woods for a second, moral quandaries about spying on his friends competing with the fact that yeah, Allison had been acting pretty weird lately and this definitely put the cherry on top of the weirdness pie. Swearing under his breath, he followed Lydia into the forest.

It didn’t take long for him to catch up; she was walking slowly, rolling her feet to avoid making noise. When he rested a hand on her shoulder she jumped, but then pointed at the figure receding into the shadows beyond. Stiles nodded, darting forward to keep behind bushes and tree trunks as he struggled to keep Allison in sight. Lydia was right beside him, beckoning in one direction when he lost sight of her. Suddenly Allison broke into a jog, and before Stiles could catch up with her she disappeared into a thicket of trees.

“Shit!” he hissed, pulling up short. “Where did she go?”

“Shhh,” Lydia whispered. “Just listen.”

Stiles rolled his eyes, but kept his mouth shut; the wind was making the branches clatter and scrape above them, kicking up leaves into a dry rustling . But sure enough, underneath it all there was the quiet murmur of human speech. And unless Allison had either smoked a few packs of cigarettes or switched genders in the past thirty seconds, she wasn’t alone.

Lydia and Stiles crept closer. The dry leaves had become a minefield, and they cringed hideously every time one of them crinkled under their feet. The voices didn’t waver, though, and before long they were close enough to hear.

“Of course. Security is tight, but not impassable. I can give you an opening of maybe fifteen minutes, depending.”

“Depending on what?”

“On how far I’m willing to go to make this happen,” Allison said grimly. Stiles stared at Lydia, wide-eyed. What the hell was going on over there, and who was this mysterious person Allison was so chatty with about Initiative security?

“Allison,” the stranger said quietly, “I know how hard this must be for you. I just want you to know that you’re doing the right thing.”

“I know I am, Scott. I’m not having second thoughts. There’s just so many things that could go wrong, so many people that could get hurt—you, me, Derek, my friends…”

Stiles swallowed at that. Lydia’s face looked pale in the moonlight.

There was a shifting of motion, a rustle of leaves. “I promise,” so-called Scott said with quiet fervor, “I will do everything I can to make sure that not a single person gets hurt. I never wanted that, and I never will.”

“I know that, Scott, believe me. But I’m getting Derek out. No matter what.”

There was a pause. “I love you, Allison. You know that right?”

“Yeah, I kind of figured it out by the thirtieth time you told me.” Allison sounded quietly amused. “I love you too.” There was a wet, smacking sound. Stiles looked at Lydia with an expression of horror, which she quickly returned.

I am out of here, he mouthed, taking a step backwards.

A twig snapped under his boots.

Suddenly the woods were painfully silent, like the wind and the leaves decided to shut the fuck up just to spite him. He heard Allison’s voice.

“Scott? What’s wrong?”

“There’s someone out there.”

Two seconds later Stiles was face-down in the leaves, one arm wrenched behind his back and a firm grip on the back of his neck. He heard a whirring sound that years of being Allison’s friend taught him to recognize instantly: the sound of a bow being drawn.

“Identify yourselves!” she snarled.

“Woah, hey, please can we not with the violence?” Stiles cried. “It’s just us!”

There was a pause. “Stiles?” she asked hesitantly.

“And Lydia. Please don’t shoot me.”

The weight on Stiles’s back shifted slightly. “You know these people?” The unfamiliar voice said.

“What the hell are you guys doing here?” Allison demanded.

“I don’t know, the fact that my arm is about two degrees away from being twisted straight off is making it kind of hard to remember,” Stiles grunted, struggling to breathe against the cloying, leafy ground.

Allison considered for far longer than Stiles was willing to consider a good sign before relenting. “Let him go, Scott,” she said.

There was a dubious pause before the pressure on Stiles’s arm released, letting him scramble to his feet and rub his shoulder with a wince. Allison was standing a few paces away from Lydia, her bow lowered but not away.

“What are you doing out here?” Allison asked again, her voice quieter.

Stiles looked at Lydia in askance, who conveniently decided to stay quiet.

“We might have sort of, maybe, been following you,” Stiles admitted, screwing up his face in preparation for a punch or a curse or whatever abuse Allison might have lined up for him in payment for being a creeper. Nothing came. She just stood there, nodding her head slowly with her jaw set like she was just taking them in as facts, calculating her options.

"How much did you hear?" she snapped, her voice urgent.

"Calm down, we didn't hear anything," Stiles shot back. "Okay, yeah, there were some really wet and really gross kissing-noises, but luckily we interrupted you before the main event."

Allison shot a look towards her now-not-so-secret-boyfriend. “Scott?”

Scott sniffed, genuinely sniffed the air with an expression of concentration. “It’s hard to tell, we’ve been standing here a while… but their scent is stronger than it would have been if they had only just now gotten here.”

“Wait, wait, scent?” Stiles cried. “What kind of weird-ass people are you associating…with…” Stiles was really starting to develop an appreciation for the term “light-bulb moment”.

"Oh," Stiles said. Allison looked away, and Lydia shot him a look that would flash before Stiles’s eyes every time he said anything stupid from that point on.

"Allison," Stiles said quietly. "What the hell is going on?"

"You never should have gotten involved with this, Stiles," she said quietly.

Stiles’s eyes widened. "Oh god. You're going to kill us. Are you going to kill us?"

"No one's killing anyone."

"But that's what the bad guy says before he kills the meddling sympathetic sidekick," Stiles babbled, glancing wildly between Allison and her friend.

Allison frowned. "We're not the bad guys, Stiles."

"But he's..." Stiles jutted his chin up and widened his eyes meaningfully.

“How very astute of you,” Lydia murmured.

Allison sighed. "Scott," she said, brushing her fingertips up the other guy's arm. "Can you leave us for a bit?"

"Is that really a good idea?" Scott asked, raising his eyebrows.

"We'll be fine. I'll call for you when we're done."

"I won't be far." With that, Scott turned and broke into a run, taking off into the bushes.

"You wrote the note." Lydia spoke immediately after Scott had left, her eyes calm but hard. “The Old Latin was a nice touch. Online translator, I assume?” Allison looked like she was about to start on a string of objections, but at the last moment she looked away.

"I'm not going to lie to you two," Allison said, straightening up. Her voice was cold, but rough. "Not anymore. Everything you're saying, it's all true. But you have to believe me when I say that I'm doing what I'm doing to help people."

"Oh sure, people," Stiles muttered. "By people I'm assuming you mean Derek Hale, who I'd like to remind you is not in fact a person."

"Isn't he?" Allison stepped forward. "Tell me Stiles, in the time you've spent with him so far, what exactly about him was so different from you or me?"

"Oh please," Stiles said, his anger rising. "You know better than anyone how good these things are at faking it. If you let yourself believe for a second that they're anything more than monsters, they'll turn around and rip your throat out. It's just their nature."

"Oh really?" Allison shot back. "Because I've been dating Scott for almost a year now, and never once has he tried to hurt me."

"Scott?" Stiles frowned, then his eyes widened. "Oh no. No way. Not even you would be so stupid."

"Yeah, well think again," Allison snarled. "Because I'll be as dumb as a fucking rock if the alternative is killing innocents. We're supposed to protect lives, Stiles, not take them."

"I can't believe I'm hearing this," he groaned, turning around to pace in a circle. "They're monsters, Allison! Werewolves! Not some cute, cuddly dog that you should let out of its cage because you feel sorry for it!"

"Derek and his pack have never hurt a human being," Allison said. "They're no more evil or violent than any random person you might talk to on the street. And none of them deserve to be butchered. I would have thought you of all people would understand that."

Stiles’s jaw snapped shut, and he looked away. Old memories never too far from the surface bubbled up, and for a second he could practically smell the blood. Not just memories, he reminded himself. In just a few days Derek Hale would be in on a table just like the others, his skin opened up and spilling out its secrets just like the others. Except if he wasn't.

For a while, it was silent. "Are people going to get hurt?" Lydia asked, her voice quiet and level.

"That's all we're hoping to prevent," Allison replied.

Lydia nodded slowly. "Alright then. I guess you're going to ask us to keep quiet for you."

Allison looked away. "I couldn't do that to you guys."

"Yet you are."

Allison's dark eyes raised to meet Lydia's. "Yet I am," she admitted finally. "If you turn me in... well, you both know what would happen. Keeping quiet could end up being dangerous as well, but as long as you don't know anything you can prove that you weren't involved. In the end, it's your choice. I just hope you make the right one."

Lydia stared at Stiles. He didn't meet her eyes, too busy staring at a leaf on the forest floor, but he nodded his head imperceptivity.

Lydia turned back to Allison. "We'll do it," she said crisply. "I don't want anything else to do with this. And know that if you hurt someone, it's on our conscience now as well as yours." With that, she turned and walked back the way they had came, her head held high.

Allison’s eyes were sad when she looked at him. Normally that would make Stiles sad too, but this time he wouldn't let himself. Before she could say anything, he turned and followed Lydia with a straight back and a quick step. He hoped it hid the fact that underneath it all, he was shaking.

 

* * *

 

"You seem distracted."

Stiles nearly fell out of his chair as Derek's voice jolted him out of his daydream. Well "daydream" made it sound a lot more pleasant and fanciful than was strictly accurate. Blood and guts had been on his mind a lot of late.

He straightened up with a dignified tug on his lapels. "Oh, you know how it is," he said lightly. "Lots of work to do."

"Come on," Derek said, a wry smile on his lips. "What could be more important than me?"

Stiles swallowed. "You want to deflate that ego a bit, before it crushes you to death?"

"Oh, I'm sure you'd come in to rescue me before that happened," Derek commented. "You can't have the prize specimen dying on your watch, after all."

"Don't push your luck," Stiles muttered. Right now Derek was leaning against the back wall, his arms crossed over his chest and doing that thing where he somehow managed to stare right at the glass where Stiles’s face was. It was extremely disconcerting, and he found himself pushing his roller chair across the room whenever his eyes refocused on his general area.

"So," Derek began. "Don't you have any questions for me today? You've been all eager in the past."

Stiles rubbed his eyes tiredly. "Not right now," he murmured. "Unless you feel like just telling me where the rest of your pack is hiding."

Derek pretended to think about it. "I'm thinking not," he decided. "But I'll keep you posted if I change my mind."

"Thanks," Stiles said sarcastically. "Your cooperation is appreciated."

After a moment Derek began pacing in idle, lazy circles, his eyes scanning the glass. "What are we going to talk about, then?" he asked. "Or were you planning on just sitting here in awkward silence the whole time?"

"Silence is good," Stiles said. "Silence is very peaceful and calming. And quiet." Derek tilted his head dubiously but seemed to take Stiles’s suggestion.

Stiles sighed and leaned all the way back in his chair, feeling the supports creak under his weight but for once not flinching away. Four days until the Pit. That was nothing, really, nothing at all. He remembered the times before, standing by Kate's shoulder as she cut and cut, her voice never wavering from its cheerful, informative cadence. On the other hand, Kate accomplished her goal. Stiles would never forget a word she had said for as long as he lived.

“Have I ever told you—” Derek started to say.

Stiles surged to his feet and killed the audio with a violent twist of the knob. There was no way he could deal with talking to Derek right now. He stood there for a while, breathing hard, his shoulders tense and hunched, trying to forget about Derek and his stupid family and his sarcasm and his ridiculous eyebrows and focus on the wolf he knew was underneath them all.

He couldn't. Go figure.

A second later he was out the door. There was someone he had to see, and something he knew he was bound to regret.

 

* * *

 

It was good to be back in the morgue. In the morgue, things were absolute. Everything was dead or it wasn't, every puzzle she pieced together out of bile and muscle fiber had an answer that someone else would have to deal with. If she messed up, so be it. There was no one to judge her but cold flesh and colder steel.

This thing with Allison was different. Making the wrong decision was likely to hurt people, and maybe a lot of people. There was no simple answer she could get to by just thinking it through for a while, and she had a feeling that any solution she arrived at would be one she wouldn't like. Easier to just not think about it, really. She wasn't about to defend that as a responsible course of action, but it was still more attractive than the alternative.

And so she turned back to her strange and gooey friend. To be honest there were a couple other bodies that had come down to her from the Pit in the past few days, but a some common demons weren't nearly as interesting as whatever Allison had inadvertently sent her.

The gel had hardened slightly since she was last here to clean it up; she could scarcely see through the warped surface to the body beneath it. Picking up a scalpel, she was about ready to begin carving the substance away when a different thought occurred to her. After all, the gel appeared to be a catalyst of some kind. If she allowed it to continue without disturbing it... well, the results would be interesting.

She smiled. Of course, allowing the gel to cure would mean more waiting, but she could handle that. She was patient.

 

* * *

 

 

He had been waiting at Sadie’s for about an hour when Allison showed up.

He hadn't put up the metaphorical bat-signal or anything, but somehow he knew that she'd be here soon. She didn't look too surprised either as she saw him in their usual corner. For a second she wavered, like she was going to turn around and march right back out the door and avoid whatever social awkwardness lingered after finding out that your friend is conspiring to break a werewolf out of science-prison, but a glare from Stiles did the trick. She trudged over to him like he had her on a tractor beam before sliding into the seat across from him.

Her eyes found the three empty milkshake glasses around the table. "Aren't they supposed to take those away?" she asked with a slight smile.

"I think they want me to feel ashamed of myself," he said, prodding at the dregs at the bottom of his glass. She watched him carefully, her eyes tired as she waited for him to make the first move. To be honest, he had been hoping to talk himself out of this before now. But no dice.

"Okay, um," he began, rubbing his hands over his hair. "Not meaning to sound like an old action movie cliché, but... I'm in."

Allison looked up sharply. "What are you saying?"

"Exactly what I just said. I want in on whatever it is that you're planning on doing to bust Derek out. Assuming that you're not lying about the no casualties part, you're going to need more people on the inside if you want this to go down without a hitch."

"No, Stiles," Allison said firmly. "I can't let you do that."

"Well you're not the boss of me. Take that sentiment and translate it into something that doesn't sound like it was said by a five year old girl."

"Do you have any idea what would happen to you if you were caught?" Allison hissed. Stiles met her gaze levelly.

"More than most," he said. "You're forgetting the fact that, between you, me, and Lydia, I've seen more shit than all of you combined. I've been in the Pit, okay? I've been in the Pit with Kate. At least Lydia has the benefit of knowing that 95% of the time the people she's cutting into are already going to be dead." He sighed. "I've never agreed with what they've done, okay? But it was always to save lives, and they were never really human. But the Hales... they were always different. This is different."

"Derek is different."

"I didn't say that," Stiles snapped. "Not specifically. Derek is just... whatever. I don't care."

"Well for not caring, you're certainly putting a lot on the line for his safety," Allison pointed out.

Stiles pouted. "It's not for him. I just can't do this, not again, and not when I've been building a fucking relationship with the guy for the past week. He recommended a book to me, for Chrissakes." He sighed. "I think this has been a long time coming now. If I have to get out, why not do it with a bang?" Something occurred to him, and he leaned forward eagerly. "Are there going to be any bangs?" he asked. "Seeing as I'm a fellow conspirator now, I think I deserve to know if there are going to be any explosives involved. And believe me when I say I am nothing if not enthusiastic with that concept in all non-lethal applications."

Allison looked extremely reluctant, but Stiles was willing to unleash the full force of his stubbornness on her should she refuse. After a moment she let her head fall into her hands with a groan.

"I am going to regret this," she muttered.

"Join the club," Stiles said, sucking down the last remains of his fourth milkshake with a sound like a death rattle. "So tell me. What's the plan?"

"We shouldn't talk here," Allison said, glancing around furtively. The only other person was Frieda, who was mopping down the counter for the fifth time and periodically shooting their table a scathing glare. "There's a meeting planned, tomorrow night, same place in the woods. Meet us there at eleven and we'll get you caught up."

"Ooo, furtive gatherings in the dead of night," Stiles said appreciatively. "This whole conspiracy business is proving to be just as cool as I could have hoped."

"This isn't a game, Stiles," Allison said sharply. "If you're caught helping us--"

"I know, I know, blood guts death doom, blah blah blah," Stiles said flippantly. "Please, don't read me the whole pamphlet. I have it memorized. Yes I'm sure, yes I've thought about this, no I still don't approve of you and Fido's forbidden love--"

Allison kicked him in the shin.

"You and Lydia really need to find some way of expressing yourselves that doesn't involve violence to my lower body," Stiles groaned. "Seriously, use your words."

"One last thing," she said as Stiles climbed to his feet and prepared to limp back to the elevator. "I know this is probably obvious, but you can't try and let Derek know that you're going to be helping him. It's too much of a risk."

"No whispering to Wolf-Man, got it," Stiles grumbled.

 

* * *

 

"Okay, here's one. Favorite animal."

Derek raised an eyebrow. "Seriously?"

"The rules are the rules. Answer the question. And don't say wolf."

Derek thought about it. "Maybe an eagle," he suggested. "They can fly high, see at a distance. Good combat abilities."

"You would choose that," Stiles groused good-naturedly, swiveling around in his chair with a grin. Ever since his conversation with Allison he’d been doing everything possible to distract himself from what was coming, and as it turned out talking to Derek was the best solution. He’d simply been leaving his end of the comm open for simplicity’s sake, although the unfiltered Stiles experience did give Derek a lot more to make fun of.

"What's yours then?" Derek grumbled.

"Platypus," Stiles said immediately. "They're a mammal that lays eggs, people didn't even believe they were a real animal when they first discovered them, and they have a venomous spine on their legs. It's like nature had a bunch of extra parts when it was done with everything else and then just dumped them all into this one thing."

"That's weird," Derek said.

"At least I have imagination," Stiles shot back.

Derek scoffed quietly, leaning his shoulder against the glass. This was one of the times where his eyes fell a few feet off from where Stiles was, so Stiles rolled his chair over so that they were.

"You haven't asked me any serious questions in a while," Derek said offhandedly. "I'm not complaining. I'm just wondering what your game is."

"The game is questions," Stiles shot back. "And the current play is—celebrity crush."

Derek shook his head, but a quiet smile made its way onto his face. "Suit yourself. Also, Jennifer Lawrence. Or maybe Tom Hardy."

Stiles smirked. "Double answer. I dig."

“How old are you?” Derek asked.

Stiles shifted in his chair. “That’s a bit of a personal question.”

“I’d say trying to get me to betray the last remaining members of my family is pretty personal,” Derek deadpanned.

“Fine, fine. I’m twenty four, if you have to know.”

Derek’s mouth twisted. “That’s a bit young to be involved in this kind of thing, isn’t it?”

“They recruited me out of high school based on my high test scores.”

“What, so a bunch of men in black showed up outside your classroom with a bunch of forms and you just agreed? No offense, but that’s pretty imbecilic.”

“Shut up.”

“What? I’m just saying—”

“No seriously, shut up,” Stiles hissed. For once Derek did what he was told, and Stiles slowly rose to his feet and listened carefully for the sound he thought he had heard. Sure enough, there it was again; the quiet, gradual grind that signaled a door outside was opening.

“Shit,” he hissed. Chris Argent would be coming back to check in on him, and find him getting all chatty with the HST. Well, not if Stiles could help it. He hurried over to the control panel. “Derek, I apologize in advance for this. Whatever you do, just don’t talk.”

“What are you—Argh!” His sentence was cut off by a jolt of electricity sizzling through him, which hit just as Commander Argent opened the door.

“Had enough yet?” Stiles yelled, killing the power with a flourish. He pretended to be surprised after “noticing” Argent come in. “Sir!” he said. “I didn’t see you there.”

“Stiles,” he said, watching as Derek doubled over and glared through the glass. “I’m glad to see you’ve begun a more rigorous line of questioning. Have you made any progress?”

“Not yet, sir, but I’ll crack him. He just needs a bit more persuasion,” Stiles said, tapping the shock button briefly for effect. Derek jumped and snarled impressively. Argent looked pleased.

“Good. Don’t hold anything back. They’re just monsters, after all.” And with that, he turned and left.

Stiles waited a good long minute until the last sounds of his exist had faded away before collapsing back into his chair with a sigh of relief. Derek looked frazzled but mostly unharmed, his expression unreadable. It was then that Stiles realized that the comm link had still been on the whole time. Derek had heard him lie, but to Stiles’s relief he didn’t acknowledge it.

 

* * *

 

The night of the meeting with the pack finally arrived, and Stiles was ready to get it over with. A week ago if you had asked him to walk into the midst of a den of werewolves he would have laughed and then reported you to HQ. Now it seemed he was about to do it on his own free will. Clearly something had gone terribly wrong with his life, but it was too late to question it now.

Predictably, Stiles got lost five minutes in to the woods. He started out pretty confident in his directional abilities, but as it turned out most trees looked fairly similar and navigating in the dark was much easier in practice than execution. By the time 10:15 rolled around, Stiles was sitting on a log with no idea which direction to start in to get back to town, let alone find their clandestine meeting place. He sighed through his nose. Clearly he wasn't cut out for this sneaking around stuff.

"You Stiles?"

He nearly jumped out of his skin when a voice sounded right by his ear, sending him tumbling forward in a rush to get away that ended with him sprawled on the ground. He rolled up and cast a beleaguered eye at the unimpressed guy standing in front of him. His arms were crossed over his chest and his curly-haired head was raised in a judgmental pose.

"Who's asking?" Stiles asked, clambering to his feet.

The guy raised an eyebrow."Isaac. Now come on, you're already late." Stiles followed after him at a healthy distance, noting the way he prowled through the forest like he owned it. Something about him just screamed "predator" and Stiles’s hindbrain was definitely paying attention. Then again, Isaac's natural aura of danger wasn't all that was worth paying attention to.

"Is there anyone in this pack that isn't crafted like a Greek god?" Stiles muttered under his breath.

"I can hear you."

"Oh. Sorry."

They spent the next few minutes in excruciatingly awkward silence as Isaac lead him to the glade. Stiles ducked through the bushes as well, impressed at the wall against sight that they formed. When he was inside he saw Allison sitting on a log with an electric lantern at her feet, surrounded by what Stiles presumed were werewolves. Scott he recognized, but there was also a bigger guy sitting on the ground with a thorny-looking blonde sprawled in his lap. A shorter man with spiky hair and an impassive face was leaning on a nearby tree. Stiles smiled at everyone brightly.

"Hallo!" he said, mustering up what little courage he had. "How is everyone?"

The blonde sized him up. “So, this is your boy,” she said. “How’s Derek doing, by the way? You’ve left some of him left for us to rescue, right?” Stiles felt his heart go cold, and any words he might have said dried up on in his throat.

“Enough, Erica,” Scott warned. “Stiles is an ally.”

"Stiles," Allison said, pointedly ignoring the conflict to gesture at the ground beside her. "Glad you made it, with some assistance."

"Yeah, woods are not my forte," Stiles said weakly, tearing his eyes off Erica. "My natural element is sitting in front of a computer monitor."

"How exactly is this guy supposed to be useful?" the guy the blonde was currently using as a chair asked. "He couldn't even find his way to the meeting."

"I'm sorry, was wilderness survival skills a requirement for a prison break mission?" Stiles shot back. "I'm sorry, I didn't know. I'll see myself out."

"He's always like this. Best just ignore him," Allison suggested. "Stiles, this is Erica, Boyd, Isaac and Oz. You already know Scott."

Stiles raised an eyebrow at the guy with spiky hair. "Your name is Oz? That's pretty weird."

Oz stared him down. "Says the guy named 'Stiles’s."

"Exactly!" Stiles cried. "When a guy named Stiles says your name is weird, you know it's gotta be bad."

Oz tilted his head. "Good point."

"If everyone's done making friends, I'd like to get down to business," Allison interjected. "Or did you want to do some team building exercises first? Maybe some trust falls?"

Scott smiled wryly at that. It was nice to see that Allison had found someone who appreciated her occasionally biting remarks.

“Stiles, Oz is from Sunnydale,” Allison explained. “He’s had some…experience with the branch of the Initiative there, before they shut it down. His input has been invaluable.” Oz bowed his head in acknowledgement.

Allison pulled out her laptop. "This is a map of Beacon Hills," she said, flipping it around for everyone to see. "The main entrance to the Initiative is here," she said, her fingers locating the vet's office, "And the back entrance is here." Now she pointed to a spot on the other end of the woods. "Both of these entrances are heavily guarded, and as far as infiltration goes they're not looking good. But the Initiative is underground. And they gotta get air from somewhere."

Now her fingers moved to various pinpoints around the town of Beacon Hills itself. "There are a number of ventilation shafts going up all over the town. Obviously these are well defended as well, but many just by automated systems. Not all of them are big enough either... but some are." Her finger jutted down in the middle of her screen. "Beacon Hills High School is our best bet for an entry point. The vent goes straight down to the heart of the Initiative."

“We’re actually climbing through the ventilation shafts?” Boyd said incredulously. “Isn’t that a bit too James Bond?”

“Don’t see what’s wrong with a little James Bond now and then,” Oz commented.

“It’s our only viable option,” Allison cut in. “Now, even without armed guards we still have the security systems to reckon with. Which is where we will come in.” She flipped to another screen on her laptop, revealing a diagram of what looked like a very big and very complicated piece of machinery.

“This is one of three of the generators used to bring power to the Initiative,” she explained. “Normally it only uses two, with the third one as a backup generator. If we’re going to knock out their defense systems, we have to take down all three.”

“And let me guess,” Isaac said. “These things are their own little Death Stars.”

“They will be highly defended,” Allison admitted. “But with a combination of distractions and long-distance attacks, they’re our best bet. Once you’ve knocked them all out, you’ll need to try and keep them from repairing them until Stiles, Derek and I can make our way up the ventilation shaft.”

“And how exactly do you expect to do that?” Erica said. “That’s got to be a thousand feet of narrow, vertical, claustrophobic tunneling. And I’m pretty sure they won’t have the convenience of a ladder.”

“I’m making a stop by the armor and supply station before we begin. Besides making sure that the soldiers don’t have it any easier than they need to, I’ll be picking up some high tech climbing gear that should ease our way.”

“Hang on, hang on,” Isaac said. “If we cut out the power, won’t that mean that all of the cells will open?”

“You need power to open the cell doors,” Allison explained. “As long as the cells are closed when the lights go out, everyone should stay tucked safe and sound in their compartments.”

“What about Jackson?” Boyd asked. “Are we just leaving him there?”

“Jackson can take care of himself,” Allison said. “Right now they have him in the morgue, which means the only security will be Lydia herself, and she won’t even be there.”

“Are you forgetting about the floors filled with armed guards between him and the surface?” Stiles commented.

“They won’t be a problem. No one has figured out yet how to kill Jackson for good, ourselves included.”

“What about me?” Stiles asked. “Where do I fit in to all of this?”

Allison turned to him. “Since you’ll be the one at the closest proximity to Derek at the time, it will be your job to break him out and get to the rendezvous point. I’m not going to lie, it’s going to be pretty dangerous. So if you want to back down, now is the time.”

Stiles genuinely thought about it, about scrambling around in the dark prying open doors and chaperoning a big angry werewolf that he’d been pestering for the past week. Literally nothing about that mental image was appealing, but compared to the Pit it looked like an island vacation.

“I’m good,” he said firmly. “You can count on me.”

Allison smiled. “I know I can.”

 

* * *

 

The trouble started the next day.

Well, if you wanted to get technical then the trouble had started as soon as Derek Hale arrived, and had been continuing in the background since then. This development, then, was a problem with the problem.

Stiles was sitting with Derek, who had lapsed into one of his brooding sessions that Stiles thought best not to interrupt. He seemed to need to do them every day, like some kind of low-grade anger regiment. Stiles was happy enough to just spin in circles and wonder about the mess he’d gotten himself into.

Then, of course, Chris Argent walked in.

Stiles nearly tripped to his death in his hurry to stand up and salute. Argent looked from him to Derek’s cage, where the werewolf was currently sitting against the back wall and glaring vaguely at the glass.

“Sir!” Stiles said, fighting down waves of panic. Why was he here? There were still two days until Stiles was supposed to take Derek to the Pit and pull out whatever secrets Stiles still had to harvest. And Stiles got the feeling that Argent wasn’t one for social calls.

“Stiles,” he said coolly, transferring his gaze back to him. Under those freakishly blue eyes Stiles felt like he could have caught hypothermia.

He knew. Oh god, he knew. Stiles forced himself to breathe normally and adopt a sickly smile.

“How may I help you, sir?” he managed.

“I’m here to check on your progress,” Argent said, meandering over to the control panel and running his fingertips across it. His fingers found Stiles’s clipboard, and flipped through the pages of doodles he had left there. Stiles winced. This was not good.

“I was just letting him stew for a bit, sir,” he said. “Figured that silence would cook an answer out of him eventually.”

“Yes, well,” Argent said, turning back to face him. “Eventually isn’t good enough anymore. I’m putting this case on the fast track.”

Stiles felt his heart plunge into his gut and freeze there. “Meaning, sir?”

Argent raised his chin. “I want Derek Hale in the Pit. Tonight.”

 

* * *

 

Forty minutes later, Stiles was slumped in the corner seat at their booth at Sadie’s with Allison across from him. After Argent had left, he had sunk into his chair breathing hard and counted down the seconds until he could bolt to the elevator. His hands were practically shaking too much to text, but he managed to get a message out to Allison before sinking into the cheap vinyl and trying to breathe.

“You’re sure he doesn’t know?” she said, her voice low and urgent.

“No, I’m not!” Stiles cried, flinching and glancing around the diner before lowering his voice. “Maybe he does. I don’t know. I don’t know.”

“Relax, Stiles,” Allison said, reaching a hand out to grip his firmly. “If he knew you were working with us, he would have arrested you.”

“Maybe not,” Stiles groaned. “Maybe he’s just fucking with me. Like a cat with a mouse. I think I might barf.”

“Please don’t,” Allison said, her eyes darting to the other people in the restaurant. Drawing any more attention to themselves was the last thing they needed right now, Stiles realized. He wrapped his arms around his stomach and forced the panic down, taking one breath, two breaths, and then meeting Allison’s eyes again.

“What are we going to do?” he asked. “I can’t do this again, Allison. I told you that.”

“And you won’t have to,” she said fiercely. “I promise.”

“Really? Because right now it’s looking more and more like our plan is a bust.”

“No, we can still do this. We just have to move quickly.”

Stiles looked at her in growing horror. “You can’t be serious,” he said. “You’re talking about moving everything two days sooner. I mean, out of seven days total planning that’s cutting out 30 percent!”

“We can do it if we have to,” Allison said.

Stiles shook his head. “What about the full moon? Your puppies aren’t going to be at the top of their game.”

“We don’t need the moon. We’re strong enough without it. Trust me on this, Stiles,” Allison said. “If you’re in, we can do this. We can do it tonight.”

Stiles ran his hands over his face and fisted his knuckles into the hollows of his eyes. Everything was happening so quickly and he felt like he was spinning out of control with no idea what was in the future except more speed, more fear, and eventual violence. But there was no turning back now. He wouldn’t even if he could.

“Alright,” he croaked. “I trust you, Allison. With my life. I hope you understand that that’s what’s happening right now.”

“I won’t let you down,” she promised. “What time are you moving him?”

“Midnight.” He glanced at his watch. It was six at night already. “I’m off duty at the moment. Supposed to be getting some sleep in preparation. Or whatever.”

“Do that,” Allison urged. “Keep your strength up. This will all be over soon.”

“That is so not comforting,” he grumbled.

Frieda appeared by their table with a scowl, her notepad flipped out aggressively. “Anything to drink?” she demanded.

“Water,” they both replied automatically. After fixing them both with a stare that could curdle milk, Frieda strode back to the kitchen looking like she was going to start cutting up some voodoo dolls in their shape. With the way this week had gone so far, she actually might.

Stiles returned home with five hours to spare. He hadn’t slept in… well, that wasn’t important. Either way, he had no plans of shutting his eyes. Instead he plopped down on the couch and turned the TV to the most upbeat and banal show he could.

His stomach was churning, and he thought for a minute about getting something to eat but then figured that the risk of vomiting outweighed any potential benefits. His muscles seemed to vibrate with energy, yet he felt exhausted. The TV gave off sounds in the background that swirled around his brain and made him feel feverish. He wasn’t paying attention, his eyes glued to the steadily darkening window pane as the lawn outside transitioned from greens to blues and then a solid, hungry black.

He could die today. It was entirely possible. After all, people were going to be panicked and many of them would have guns, everything would be dark and hard to see, and to be honest Stiles had never felt very lucky in that sort of thing.

But it wasn’t the thought of dying that scared him. Failing would be far worse. Working for a secret government organization had its benefits, like an obscene paycheck and great dental, but it also made it very easy for you to mysteriously drop off the face of the earth and only be heard from by your distant screams. Or maybe they wouldn’t even be able to take down the generators, and Stiles would go back to the Pit. He wasn’t sure what would walk back out of it again.

He took a steadying breath. One way or another, everything was going to change tonight. He only hoped he could make it out.

 

* * *

 

Lydia hadn’t left the lab in at least twelve hours. She’d caught a few odd hours of sleep on one of the spare operating tables with her head jammed on top of a rolled up lab coat and the cold, uncomfortable metal pressing into her back. Every once in a while someone would stop by and bring her some food, which by the time she got to it was generally cold and unpleasant. She hardly tasted it.

Since she had left the cocoon alone, it had continued to harden until it had formed something like a chrysalis. Periodically Lydia would probe at it with her tools and try to see what was happening underneath it, but the surface was soon too hard to withstand anything but a bone saw. She could see nothing through it but dark shapes, but she could swear that sometimes they moved.

Something was happening, and there was no way she was going to miss it.

 

* * *

 

One left turn. Straight five steps, then a right. Open a door, then another left and another right. Wait for Allison. Left five right open left right wait. Simple, really. Painfully, obviously simple. Yet Stiles found himself repeating his instructions over and over again in his head like a mantra, one that would guide him through what would potentially be total blackness.

When he walked into the booth Derek was standing in the middle of the floor, his shoulders tense, staring straight at the glass. Clearly he could sense that something had changed. There were five armed guards waiting outside with a gurney, but for now it was just the two of them. The lights still shined on belligerently. There wasn’t much time.

“Stiles?” Derek asked as soon as he was inside. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” Stiles said, his throat dry. He moved over to the control panel and pulled up the gas configuration, began inputting the necessary amounts he knew he would need. “Just a bit of maintenance is all. Don’t worry about it.”

Derek didn’t look convinced, but then again Stiles hadn’t been very convincing. The nausea and shakiness had passed around ten-thirty and given way to cold, fluttery nerves. But nerves he could work with. Sometimes fear made you stronger.

Stiles did some quick calculations in his head based on Derek’s weight and body mass then factored in the right amount of sedative for the gas. His heart beat quickly as he double-checked his math before pressing a button to warm up the dispersers.

Derek’s neck snapped up as the room began to hum. “What’s happening?” he demanded, advancing on the glass. “Stiles!”

“You might want to sit down,” Stiles suggested as a light mist began to pool across the floor. Derek’s eyes followed it wildly before he whirled around and slammed his fists against the glass with a thud.

“Don’t do this,” he said, his voice breaking. “Please.”

“It’s going to be okay,” Stiles said, something twisting in his gut. The gas was lapping up the sides of the wall now and swirling around Derek’s face; he took a deep breath and slammed his fists against the glass again, causing it to shake ever so slightly. His mouth gasped open when he couldn’t hold his breath any longer, his eyes going unfocused as he fell to his hands and knees and then rolled over to his side. Stiles counted to thirty in his mind and ignored the way his stomach was lurching before killing the gas and clearing the room. With that he stepped outside and gestured to the guards.

“Take him,” he said, too tired for anything else.

A few minutes later they came wheeling out with Derek strapped to the gurney, straps across his legs and chest holding him down. Even knocked out he still looked pissed. Stiles resisted the urge to push his hair back from his forehead.

As they made their way through the Initiative, Stiles kept his fists balled in his pockets, his jaw set. He felt like he could practically sprint with all the energy building up inside of him, but he forced himself to slow it down. For this to work out, they had to time it perfectly.

Suddenly the lights flickered, almost imperceptivity; there was a hum that built up through the walls, then faded back to normal. Stiles hoped that no one had noticed him twitch. Come on, Allison. Two generators to go and they were running out of time.

As they came to an intersection of hallways, Stiles called a halt. This was where they were supposed to be when the blackout hit; any further and he might not be able to find his way. The soldiers turned around and looked at him expectantly, and Stiles realized that he couldn’t just have them wait here.

“I have to check his blood levels,” Stiles explained. “It’s just procedure. Can’t have him waking up too soon or anything.”

The leader’s eyes narrowed, but he gave a shallow nod. Stiles stepped forward and pulled out a device which was actually meant to detect metals and began running it over Derek’s body. He was painfully aware of the seconds ticking by and the restlessness of the guards as they waited.

“Alright, let’s go,” the guard said. “We can’t wait around here forever.”

At that moment there was a distant boom, and a second later the hallway was plunged into total darkness.

Stiles began counting under his breath as the sounds of panic rose up around him; he was jostled as people pushed by, and the metallic click of guns being cocked crackled in the air around him. At fifteen seconds, though, the lights flickered back on with a labored whirr, wavering but still lit.

Damn it. They hadn’t knocked out the emergency generator yet, and they were almost to the Pit. They were running out of time.

“The hell’s going on?” one of the guards demanded, his gun still raised protectively. Stiles didn’t like the look of that one bit, but suddenly something occurred to him.

“I—I don’t know,” he stammered, not having to try all that hard to act shaken. “You should go find out—He’s not going to be awake for a couple hours or so,” Stiles said innocently. “I’ll just keep him here until you get back.”

The guard looked torn, glancing between Derek’s prone form to Stiles and then up at the wavering lights again.

“Damn it,” he muttered. “Alright, you, you and you with me. Greenburg, you stay behind with the prisoner.”

Stiles ground his teeth as he watched the soldiers’ backs recede around the corner. So close, and yet so far. Luckily the hallway was otherwise largely empty, a few people in lab coats hurrying by while casting suspicious glances at the lighting. Fortunately enough it looked like many people were heading for the exits, although Stiles wasn’t sure how smart it was to try and take an elevator in a power outage.

He waited, the suspense rising the longer the lights stayed on. Had something gone wrong? Surely they should have taken it out by now. It was supposed to be a simultaneous assault. The longer the minutes dragged on, the more panic beat into his chest.

Then there was a flash of light and a crackle as the lights finally blew out for good, and there was nothing left except total darkness. He heard Greenburg swear and the distant sounds of screams, but they were nothing. He dove forward, his hand darting into his lab coat to pull out a syringe. Feeling around in the darkness he brushed against the edge of the gurney, then found Derek’s arm. Fumbling for the IV connector, he managed to fit the syringe in and squeezed the pump once.

There was a gasp, and the arm whipped out of his grip and sent him stumbling backwards. Stiles dove forward again before he could lose him, grabbing Derek’s shoulder and pushing him back down.

“Stay quiet,” he hissed into his ear. “We’re going to get you out of here, but you have to do exactly as I say. Do you understand?” There was a pause in which Stiles wondered whether he was about to have his head twisted off anyways, but then he felt Derek nod against his cheek. With that Stiles slowly loosened his hold, but stayed close.

“There’s a guard,” he said quietly. “Just one, but armed. We need to get past him if we’re going to—hey—” With that Derek pulled away, leaving Stiles moored in the middle of the blackness.

“Get back here!” he hissed, waving his arms around in the hope of finding something. They met only open air.

“Who’s there?” Greenburg’s voice again coming from a few feet away. There was a harsh, metallic sound. Stiles froze.

“Don’t shoot,” he said quietly. “Friendly here.”

There was a short cry, a loud thump, and then a more ponderous thud as something heavy hit the floor. Stiles ground his teeth.

“Dude,” he whispered. “I had an extra tranq. No need for extraneous violence.” A second later someone grabbed Stiles’s shoulder, twisted his arm behind his back and slammed him face-down onto the gurney.

“Who are you?” Derek said, jerking Stiles’s arm painfully. “Why are you doing this?”

“Jesus, Robo Cop, will you ease up a bit? My parts don’t bend that way.” The only response Stiles got was being shoved harder onto the gurney. “Okay, okay,” he said, starting to seriously question some key components of the plan—like the fact that Derek would just go along with it. “I’m working with Allison and Scott to get you out of here. I’d love to stay and chat for a while longer, but if I’m not mistaken these kinds of things benefit from speed.”

There was only silence behind him, and Derek’s grip didn’t loosen; but then suddenly the hands disappeared, and Stiles straightened up with a wince.

“Now that that’s out of your system,” he said. “Shall we get the fuck out of here?”

Derek was silent, which Stiles took to mean he was glowering. With that he grabbed Derek’s sleeve and pulled him to the wall, running his other hand along it to guide them as they moved. Derek automatically reached out to bury a fist in the coat on Stiles’s back, and that way they moved along the passages keeping flat to the wall.

Other people stumbled by occasionally, and a few times Stiles almost tripped over someone sitting against the wall. A common refrain was demanding why the emergency flashlights weren’t working, which Allison had clearly had the foresight to remove the batteries from. Glowing lights from people’s cellphones darted around the hallways like will-o-wisp’s, and every time they came near, Derek would duck his head to hide his face.

The whole time Stiles refused to let himself break out of the mantra in his head: Left five right open left right wait. In total it should take about two and a half minutes, though in the dark it could take longer. Stiles’s hand ran over the edge of the door and he grabbed the handle without hesitation.

It was locked. Of course.

“Derek,” he whispered. “Use your grotesque strength to get this door open, why don’t you?”

Derek shifted past him, brushing against him as he slid to get ahead and grab the handle. There was the sound of groaning metal and a loud bang, and Stiles found himself being pulled through the door.

A left and a right later and Stiles pulled them to a halt. He stuck his finger in his mouth and held it out to the air; a subtle breeze was coming from the wall across from them that must have been the entrance to the ventilation shaft. Sure enough Stiles’s hand found the outside of the grate. The screws had already been loosened, and when Stiles felt around inside he found the pack that Allison had promised to leave him. Inside he felt the cool metal cylinder of a flashlight, a piece of rope, some carabineers and six heavy circles that Stiles assumed was the high-tech urban climbing gear she had promised. There was only one thing missing: Allison herself.

“Well?” Derek said. “What are we waiting for?”

“Hold on, okay?” Stiles snapped. “Allison was supposed to be here already.”

Derek fell silent. There was no one in this section of the base, but in the distance they still heard shouting and a metallic clunking.

“Where is she?” Derek asked eventually. He sounded tense, but what do you expect.

“How should I know?” Stiles flipped open his phone and checked for a message of any kind. Nothing. Was it worth the risk of calling her?

He decided it was. Raising his phone to his ear, he listened to the phone ring three times, four times, sounding more plaintive with each repeat. Just when Stiles thought it was over the line opened with a click.

“Stiles?” Allison’s voice was hushed.

“We’re at the meeting point,” Stiles replied. “Where are you?”

There was a burst of static and the sounds of movement, and for a second Stiles thought that the phone had gone dead.

“Go on without me,” she said suddenly. “I’ll get out a different way, but you need to leave now.”

“What different way?” Stiles demanded. “Allison, what’s happening?”

“Just go!” With a click, the line went dead for real. Stiles lowered the phone feeling strangely empty.

“She says to go on without her,” Stiles said hollowly. Derek was quiet for a minute before taking the bag out of his hands and pushing it back into the vent.

“Come on,” he said. “Allison can take care of herself. If she says to go, we should go.”

“What if she needs help?” Stiles protested. “Shouldn’t we…”

“Do what, exactly?” Derek snapped. “Our only option is through that vent. The longer we stay here, the more danger we’re putting everyone else in. Now let’s go.” With that, Derek hauled himself through the opening and crawled further in. After one last moment of indecision Stiles kicked the wall hard and pulled himself after him.

The vent was high enough for him to crawl on his hands and knees, and he practically ran into Derek. With a click, the flashlight flared to light and illuminated their faces. Stiles squinted against the sudden flash before grabbing the bag and pulling out two of the flat metal disks and leaving them at the entrance of the vent. Allison might need them.

When he turned back he saw Derek had crawled a bit further to a junction and disappeared around a corner. Stiles shuffled after him and just rounded the bend when suddenly the vent opened up around him to reveal an enormous tunnel twenty feet wide. Derek had already wormed his way out of the tight space and was standing on the floor a few feet away, the flashlight pointed up towards where the ceiling should be. The darkness swallowed it up.

Stiles whistled appreciatively, turning in a slow circle. “Wow. This was not what I expected.” When he looked back he saw that Derek was watching him with a strange look on his face, the flashlight aimed at his chest. Stiles frowned. “What?”

Derek seemed to shake himself. “Nothing. You’re just not what I expected.”

Ah right. This was technically the first time Derek had got a good look at his face. He lifted his arms and glanced down at himself. “Oh yeah? What did you expect?”

“A sixteen year old with acne and a World of Warcraft t-shirt,” Derek said flippantly, crouching down to dig through the bag and leaving Stiles unsure whether he’d just been insulted or weirdly complimented. He shook his head. That didn’t matter right now.

“So what are these, exactly?” he asked as Derek set out the four remaining disks and the rope.

“Climbing gear.”

“Yeah, what kind?”

“No idea.”

“Oh, well that’s peachy,” Stiles said, poking at it with his foot. “Neither of us has any idea how to use the gear we’re going to be using to scale hundreds of feet of faceless metal. I see no way this could end badly.”

“Shut up and come and help me, Stiles.”

“I liked you better when you weren’t so bossy,” he grumbled, but wandered over all the same. The ropes, they decided, were to be tied around their waists and then connected with the carabineers to the disks; after some fiddling and flipping the switch on the side, Stiles figured out that each one had a powerful electromagnet. He spent the next few moments trying to pry it off the metal floor.

“If I’m not mistaken, you do it like this,” Stiles said, stepping up to the side of the shaft and activating one of the magnets. It stuck to a point high above his head, and he used it to pull himself further up as he activated the second. It held, and he twisted around from a few feet off the ground supported by a piece of rope and a carabineer connected to each of the magnets. Gritting his teeth, he removed one of the carabineers and transferred it to the other magnet, then released the grip and slid it further up. Hanging with his feet in the air and his weight supported by the magnet, he turned around to give Derek a thumbs up. He, on the other hand, still looked doubtful.

“How do you know that it won’t just give out?” he said.

“Because I’m lucky that way,” Stiles lied. “Come on, now. This is going to take forever, and we’re on a bit of a limited time schedule here.”

Derek looked like he was weighing the benefits of checking back into his cell, but eventually shook his head and set to scaling the wall a few feet away from Stiles. Putting his weight on the magnet whenever possible, Stiles got to climbing.

 

* * *

 

Several floors up, the Initiative was at war.

The emergency generator on the command level couldn’t be sabotaged; it was simply a matter of reaching it. In the dark it was difficult to find, and whenever someone got close, a quick blow would shoot out of the dark and rebuff them.

One of the soldiers had found a box of old flares in an ancient supply cupboard, and after weighing the benefits of light against the danger of flame they had struck them. It was obvious that whoever had orchestrated this attack had people on the inside; all of the night-vision gear had been sabotaged, including many of the flashlights. Whoever they were, they had stayed there in the dark, striking the soldiers quickly and silently and leaving before anyone could locate them.

The flares changed things. Their attacker was driven into the shadows, but that didn’t stop them; now whenever anyone drew close to the generator or their hiding place, an arrow would shoot out to puncture a foot or an arm, hitting all the non-lethal points with stunning accuracy. There was a squad out on patrol that HQ had called back, but without the elevator, they had to scale the empty shaft manually, and that took time.

Time. Time was a luxury that Director Argent couldn’t afford. Her fingernails tapped on the surface of the computer module as she stared at the wall of blank monitors and listened to the shouts and cries of men and women outside. There were obviously dealing with a small force, perhaps just one person, but whoever it was had a highly defensible position and a determined attitude. More worrying, Allison was not answering her phone.

She kept her face hard and impassive for the sake of those around her, but inside, her mind was turning and whirring like frantic clockwork. With luck, it would be mere minutes before her forces took back the emergency power. Without it wouldn’t be much longer. With power restored to the command center they could access the security cameras and low-power systems throughout the Initiative, and get a feel for what exactly was going on. Only then would she allow herself to consider what had happened to her daughter.

From the hallway outside there was a clunk, and then a loud, angry humming.

“Ma’am!” someone cried. “Security systems rebooting. Visual online in three, two…”

The screens buzzed to life, crackling static slowly resolving itself into the greenish tint of night vision. The majority of the hallways were clustered with people cowering or stumbling around; they quickly settled on the hallway outside, where a figure in lightweight battle armor was crouched just around the corner, a bow drawn. A helmet and night-vision visor was obscuring their face, and the monitor was too fuzzy to make out their details.

Director Argent’s eyes narrowed.

“Have a squad loop around and attack from behind,” she ordered. “Capture them alive if possible, but only under optimal circumstances. I won’t have anyone losing their lives. How much longer until our generators are restored?”

“Generator repair is critical, ma’am,” another said. “We’re currently working to reroute power from the town, which will be ready in approximately… nine minutes.”

“Director,” another voice called out, more hesitant this time. “Pressure and heat sensors in air shaft five are picking up two discrepancies around floor twelve.”

Director Argent turned to them with interest. “Do we have a visual, agent…?”

“Matt Daehler, Ma’am. No visual, ma’am. But the security cameras have their own individual batteries, so if I can pull up the archived footage from the first few minutes of the blackout…” there was some frantic tapping, and one of the screens was replaced with a fast-moving rewind of the camera in question. The footage stopped when two figures appeared climbing into the vents.

Director Argent leaned forward. “Give me the current security footage of S2, cell 4, quickly,” she barked. On a separate monitor the image appeared of an empty cage.

“Derek Hale,” she said, a cool smile touching her lips. Of course it was him. Of course, that did not explain the identity of his coconspirator.

“Can you zoom in on the face of the man who is with him?” she asked. With a short nod, Daehler did so. Argent leaned closer to the screen and scrutinized the slightly blurry features in front of her. “Run a personnel scan via face recognition.”

“Yes ma’am… we have a match. Name of Researcher Stillinski, ma’am.”

Director Argent was quiet. Stiles. She knew him as Kate’s protégé, and Allison’s friend. He’d been a part of their family’s life for years, and always loyal to the cause. Until now, of course. She took a breath. There was no room to allow emotion to cloud her judgment. A dangerous HST was at risk of escaping, and preventing that was more important than anything.

“What defensive systems do we have online?” she asked.

“Just the vapor dispersers, ma’am.”

She thought about it. “How long can we last if that ventilation shaft is closed?”

“It would be hours before any effect was noticeable.”

“Good. Close off the vents to all floors and flood it with wolfsbane gas for exactly ten minutes.”

“Ma’am… Just to clarify. You understand that the gas will eliminate all life forms, human and otherwise.”

Director Argent cast him a cool look. “I understand, Agent Daehler. Now flood it.”

 

* * *

 

Stiles was discovering an all-new personal hell on the brutal climb up the ventilation tube. The muscles in his arms weren’t burning so much as shriveling up, and he had to take more and more frequent breaks to press his cheek to the cold metal and pant until he got his breath back.

Derek was faring a lot worse than Stiles expected. The knockout gas and then the adrenaline had taken the energy out of him, not to mention the days of confinement. His breathing was uneven, and sometimes he would stop and just swing listlessly from the ropes holding him up.

Most of the time Stiles was concentrating too hard to make any decent conversation. He had to unclip one carabineer at a time so that he was constantly secured to something, and after what felt like eons of hauling himself upward, he had to focus just to avoid accidentally tumbling to his death. Above them was still nothing more than a black abyss, and below might as well have been a mirror. They were climbing out of nowhere, to nowhere.

“How you doing, Derek?” he grunted, hauling himself up. Derek was resting again, pressed close to the side of the wall and completely motionless. Stiles heard him mutter something into the metal.

“What?” he said, pulling himself up so they were just about level. “I didn’t catch that.”

“I said, did I ever mention before that I really hate heights?” Derek groaned.

Stiles actually threw his head back and laughed at that, although it was really more of a wheeze because he couldn’t seem to get his breath back. “Don’t worry man,” he said, slapping Derek’s shoulder fondly. “We’ll be there soon. Just a few more minutes of hell, and you’re free.”

“Why are you doing this, Stiles?” Derek asked, twisting his head to stare at him through lidded eyes. “I don’t even know you.”

Stiles smiled uncomfortably. “Well, I’ve been meaning to look for a new job for a while, so,” he said lightly. “I guess this is like my unofficial resignation.”

Derek huffed a laugh at that before rallying for another push up the wall. Stiles waited a bit longer to let him get ahead before starting up himself.

A second later, he froze dead solid.

“Derek, wait!” he hissed, his ears bent towards some sound he couldn’t quite place. “Stop making sound for a second.”

For once, Derek didn’t argue. Stiles closed his eyes and listened. At first there was nothing except the hum of empty air, but then he caught it; so quiet that it was hardly even there, was a quiet hiss of air.

It was then that Derek started coughing.

 

* * *

 

Lydia didn’t scare easily. Mortician was a job that lent itself well to horror, and she cloaked herself in it like armor. So when the lights flickered and then died, leaving her alone in the dark with a room full of corpses, she reacted much better than the average person might have.

Feeling her way along the edges of tables, she found her laptop and turned it on. A ghostly blue light spilled out of the screen and illuminated the darkness. There was no doubt in her mind that this was Allison’s doing; if Lydia had needed to break into a high tech organization, her first instinct would be kill the power as well.

She paused. If HQ had their emergency systems online, she could tap into them and keep up to date on what was happening. But Lydia wasn’t sure if she wanted to know what was happening. In the end, her sense of morbid curiosity won out and she logged in to the system.

The first thing she saw was a shot of Stiles and Derek climbing into the ventilation shaft. Mentally she swore; hadn’t she told Stiles not to get involved with all this? The next was of recent activity in the minor defense systems—she looked again. Sure enough, the gas dispersers were warming up for a lethal dose of wolfsbane to the exact area that Stiles and Derek had disappeared into.

She sat back. This was the exact reason she hadn’t wanted to get involved, as well as the same reason she knew she had to. Her friends were in danger, and when it came down to that or obedience she knew what her choice would be. She hung out with a bunch of corpses. That didn’t make her one.

With a quick tapping of keys, she began hacking into the defense mainframe.

 

* * *

 

 

“Oh shit,” Stiles said. They must have brought the defense systems back online, and that meant gas. “Stay still, Derek,” he called, his heart hammering in his chest as he hauled himself up next to him. He could smell it now, a sickly sweet smell on the air that seemed to coat his nose and throat with every second. Derek’s breath was catching in his throat, his eyes wide and panicked. It must have been concentrated wolfsbane, that was the only thing that made sense; which meant that in a few minutes, Stiles would be choking as well.

He did a quick mental run through of their options. The primary ones he could see mostly involved dying here. He wracked his brain, his thoughts chasing each other in circles as his panic started to take the wheel.

“Alright, hold on,” he said, moving closer so that he was well within arm’s reach. “Hold still.” He took out the syringe. It still had some tranquilizer in it; for a werewolf it would only last a couple minutes, but that would have to be enough. It was a long shot, but being unconscious might slow Derek’s breathing enough so that he had a chance.

Pulling out the flashlight, he held it in his teeth and grabbed Derek’s arm. He tried to twist away compulsively, but Stiles held him fast. Finding a vein, he jabbed the syringe in and emptied it into Derek’s bloodstream. The effect was nearly instantaneous. His struggles stopped, his coughs fading to a quiet wheeze.

Stiles pulled the needle out and inspected it. “And none for Stiles, bye,” he said with a giggle, letting it fall down into the open mouth of darkness below. He was feeling a bit giddy and light headed, although he probably would have quoted _Mean Girls_ anyways. With hands that were feeling clumsier by the second, he reached to tug the front of Derek’s shirt just over the other man’s head and tie it in a knot to keep it there. Maybe the cloth would do something. Probably it was still pointless. All the same, Stiles pulled his own up as well and tried to focus on keeping his breathing slow. Maybe it would buy him a few extra seconds before unconsciousness, respiratory failure, and death. He was an optimist to the end.

 

* * *

 

“Got you,” Lydia whispered. The gas had been active for about two minutes before she had managed to hack her way to the controls; genius-level IQ or not, hacking a high-tech military grade database was no easy feat, even from the inside. In a few quick keystrokes she disabled the gas releasers, but that wouldn’t be enough; at that point they had already filled the chamber, and she’d have to vent it into the open air.

“You there!” a sharp voice rang out behind her. “Step away from the computer with your hands where I can see them!”

Slowly Lydia lifted her palms above her head and turned around. A single soldier was standing in the doorway to the morgue, the violent red light of a flare flickering behind her. She had her gun trained on Lydia’s forehead and a look in her eyes that promised not to mess around.

“Can I help you?” Lydia said, not having to fabricate the irritation in her voice. “I was doing something important, and don’t really have time for panicked, trigger-happy soldiers running around my workspace.”

“And that important thing wouldn’t happen to be hacking into our security systems, would it? Oh yes,” the soldier said, her eyes wide and knowing. “We traced the bug to this location. And I’m not seeing a whole wealth of suspects here.” She jerked her head to encompass the room, which was suddenly huge, silent, and painfully empty. Lydia swallowed drily.

“Now you’re going to come with me,” the soldier was saying. “And if you know what’s good for you, you won’t try anything funny.”

Lydia’s fingers itched. Her friend was choking to death and the only thing stopping her was one irksome little piece of metal. All the cleverness in the world, and yet Lydia still had nothing against a bullet. Funny how the world worked. She could have laughed.

“Please, if you just,” she started to say, turning back to her computer.

“I said don’t move!” the soldier screamed, firing a warning shot over Lydia’s head. It exploded into a glass cabinet and sent the shards tinkling to the floor in a crash of sound and movement.

It was that distraction, most likely, which masked the sudden rip that cracked through the air, as well as the shifting shape on one of the morgue tables that only Lydia seemed to notice. She raised her hands back to her head, her eyes widening.

“Now, get down on the floor with your hands behind your head,” the soldier said through gritted teeth. Lydia did as she was told, always watching out of the corner of her eye where a certain cocoon was shifting. The soldier stepped further into the room, putting the table behind her as she pulled out a pair of handcuffs.

“Stay down,” she grunted. Lydia pressed her face to the floor.

A second later there was a sudden rustle of movement, followed by a cry and a rattle of gunfire peppering the back wall. Then there was a thump, and then there was silence.

Slowly Lydia raised her head off the floor. The bluish light of her computer was competing with the crackling flare, but she could make out a fallen human shape on the floor with another, less human shape crouched above it. She froze, watching carefully, but it didn’t seem to be moving. With painstaking care, she raised herself to all fours and slowly crept towards her computer. There was only one thought in her mind, and that was the string of code she would need to input in order to cycle the air through the vents and replace it with something breathable. Her addition to the toxic gases in the atmosphere would have to be pardoned later.

Her keyboard was so close she could brush it with her fingers when a hiss came from behind her. She didn’t dare to pause to look. Instead she lunged the last distance, furiously inputting the codes to clear the air and lock the controls from being altered. As her fingers completed the final keystroke, the hiss turned to a growl.

She closed her eyes and smiled to herself.

Two seconds later a set of claws dug themselves into the back of her head.

 

* * *

 

All in all, waking up to the feeling of another man’s mouth was the best thing he could have hoped for.

A second later Stiles was gasping and choking and nearly barfing a little, but mostly what he was focusing on was the fact that he was alive and someone had maybe just been kissing him. It was a while before he could string that impression into a coherent thought, though.

As he slowly came back to himself, he realized that his feet weren’t strictly attached to the ground, and that someone else was pressed very close to him. His eyes travelled up a chest and jawline to Derek’s face, and suddenly Stiles was liking his first version of events a lot better than what he was just now remembering.

“Thanks, Prince Phillip,” he gasped. “I owe you one.” He winced. “I think you broke my chest. You know you only need to do the chest pumps if their heart stops beating, right?”

“Don’t talk,” Derek warned, who looked relatively good for a guy who had just nearly choked to death. Stiles hoped his breath wasn’t too bad. Then again, he probably tasted like poison gas.

“You didn’t have to do that,” he said thickly. “I’ve been a bit of a dick to you. And I did electrocute you that one time. You probably should have just let me suffocate.”

“You’re an idiot,” Derek said.

Stiles smiled at him blearily. “And you’re an absolute sweetheart,” he said, still managing to inject a bit of sarcasm.

But Derek wasn’t done. “You risked your life to save me,” he said. “You stopped them from torturing me, and…” His mouth twisted, and he looked like whatever he was about to say was causing him enormous discomfort. “…I like you, okay? You seem like a nice guy. Now can we please shut up already?”

Stiles was quiet for a moment. “You like me.”

“Don’t read into it.”

“Wow. Even after kidnapping you, holding you hostage, and forcing you to listen to my annoying-ass voice every day, you still somehow don’t hate me.” Stiles paused. “I must be the most charming person in the universe. That, or you have terrible taste in men.”

“Can we please focus on getting out of here?”

Stiles craned his neck up to stare up towards where the ceiling was supposed to be. “We should keep climbing,” he muttered, struggling at the ropes still holding him up. A pair of strong hands caught his wrists.

“Not yet. You aren’t well.”

“Two minutes isn’t going to do me any favors,” Stiles groaned. “Don’t have your freakin’, super werewolf heal-y powers. Either let me go, or go on without me.”

“That’s not going to happen,” Derek said firmly. “Now just stop talking for five seconds and try to gather your strength.”

Stiles did as he was told, hanging there limply and trying to remember how his arms and legs worked. It struck him that Derek still hadn’t moved away; Stiles could feel the warmth of his body even through his lab coat. If Stiles wasn’t focusing so hard on not throwing up on him, he probably would have laughed awkwardly and made some sort of sexual innuendo. As it was, he was forced to just enjoy the moment with no possible ways of ruining it.

“This is actually a very pleasant experience, considering the fact that we’re suspended hundreds of feet above ground in a death tube,” he commented.

Derek smiled mirthlessly. “Then let’s see about getting ourselves out.”

The next few minutes were ones Stiles would always struggle to remember. Derek would tell him that he had clipped Stiles’s carabineer’s to his handles and hauled him up that way, to which Stiles would perpetually call bullshit on account of that being impossible. Derek never argued it for long, which probably meant it was true. But in that moment, the only thing Stiles was aware of was the pounding mass of pain growing near the back of his skull.

His head got progressively clearer the more progress they made, but since he started out as high as a kite off its string that wasn’t saying much. By the time that Derek hauled him onto flat ground, he was lucid enough to appreciate his situation and in enough pain to wish he wasn’t. He felt Derek’s hands hauling him to his feet and slinging an arm around his broad shoulders, but Stiles could scarcely keep his head up. He could, however, hear.

“Freeze.” The voice was chilly, bitter, and more than a little triumphant. Stiles felt Derek stiffen, his muscles tense. A series of metallic clicks sounded from the air around them. If Stiles never had to hear a gun being cocked again, it would still be too soon.

He forced himself to raise his head on a neck that felt like it was constructed of balsa wood and barbed wire. Behind them was a narrower vent, and above them was the open night sky. Based on Allison’s diagrams and common sense, Stiles figured the vent had taken them straight up to the roof of Beacon Hills High. Surrounding them was a platoon of armed guards, with Chris Argent standing in front of them. His arms were held behind his back.

“Give it up, boys,” he said. “We’ve got you surrounded, and are willing to use deadly force. Just come quietly and no one has to get hurt.”

Stiles felt Derek twitch, but he knew it was hopeless. Stiles was about as useful in a fight right now as a sack of potatoes, except you couldn’t even use him to hit other people. Derek had just climbed hundreds of feet after being poisoned. Werewolf powers or no, there was no just bouncing back from that.

“Last chance,” Argent said smoothly, and a line of guns raised to punctuate that remark. “You’ll be on the ground one way or another. Whether you want to come out of it looking like Swiss cheese is your decision.”

Stiles looked up at Derek’s face. His jaw was set, his eyes hard. Stiles knew that look. And it wasn’t one you’d find on a man about to surrender. He sighed quietly. One way or another, he wasn’t going back into the ground. It was a shame that the next time Lydia would see him, he’d be coming about of a black bag.

Suddenly something struck the ground just in front of them and stuck there; Stiles had just enough time to identify it as an arrow before something walloped him in the chest and sent him stumbling backwards onto the ground.

He lay there for a moment longer, weighing the pros and cons of passing out before painfully raising his head. A light smoke was clearing around the small crater where the arrow had been; the soldiers were scrambling to their feet as well, though many seemed disoriented. Stiles felt Derek’s hand close around his arm and pull him roughly to his feet.

Between them and Chris Argent stood Allison. Stiles assumed she must have dashed in front of them in the confusion following the blast, but props to an impressive entry all the same. There was a cut on her face and a smear of blood across her cheek. She had an arrow notched in her bow, though it was currently lowered.

Argent’s eyes widened. “Allison?” he snarled. “What the hell are you doing?”

“I think you know, Dad,” she said, a tinge of sadness in her voice. “I’m not letting you take them again. Shoot me, if you have to. But that’s the only way you’re getting through me.”

Argent shook his head. “You shame me,” he spat. “Your actions are a betrayal to your family, to your way of life—”

“My life?” Allison laughed, a harsh, rickety sound. Ready to fall apart. “Since when has this been my life, daddy? You think I wanted all this?” Her voice got quieter, more deadly, and her eyes found the shiny black iris of a security camera pointing right at her. Stiles knew that behind it her mother was almost certainly watching. “My very first year as an agent was spent at war. I was just a kid, but hey, if Kate could handle it then why not me? You never gave me a choice in this, never even considered it.” Her eyes narrowed. “Well, I’m making a choice now. And I choose to leave. You can try to stop me if you want, but I’m not going quietly and I’m taking my friends with me.”

Argent’s face hardened. The soldiers shot him questioning glances, shifting restlessly when faced with gunning down one of their own, but he held his ground. Even Stiles hadn’t expected him to shoot his own daughter, no matter how cold he could be, but the world was full of surprises these days.

At the last minute he raised a hand to his ear and seemed to be listening to something. Stiles’s eyes again flitted to the security camera.

“Stand down,” Argent spat out. “Stand down and let them through.” One by one the guns lowered, and Stiles saw Allison breathe a sigh of relief. Drawing herself up, she glanced back at Derek and he walked Stiles forward, sticking close to them as they passed through the crowd. Allison exchanged one last look with her father, who looked like he wanted to kill her or break down into sobs, and then they were climbing off the roof and loading into a sleek black car that was waiting in the parking lot. Beacon Hills High disappeared behind them in the rear view mirror.

 

* * *

 

When Stiles woke up he was not in his house. There was really no part of that sentence that wasn’t surprising; if his memories of the past week were true, then he shouldn’t be waking up at all. If they had been a dream, then where the fuck was he?

He started to sit up, but a strong hand planted in his chest and forced him back down again. He lolled his head to the side and met eyes with none other than Derek Hale, perched in a chair by the side of his bed with a book open on the nightstand. Stiles smiled wryly.

“I didn’t take you for the “mooning away” type,” he rasped. It was then he realized how sore his throat was, and how much his muscles hurt, and how it felt like he had been breathing in liquid nitrogen for the past eight hours.

“I wouldn’t talk,” Derek suggested helpfully. “But somehow I know you’ll ignore that.”

“Yep,” Stiles said, staring to sit up again. Derek’s face darkened and he pushed him back.

“You have something against getting some rest?” he snapped.

“Is everyone okay?” Stiles asked. “Was anyone hurt?”

Derek sighed. “No. No fatalities on either side, though a fair amount of injuries on both. We got lucky.”

At that moment there was a tsk from the doorway, and a heavy weight flounced onto the bed. Stiles winced.

“Already talking business?” Lydia said sweetly. “Stiles, your people skills are rusty.”

“Lydia,” Stiles croaked, his eyes wide. “What are you—”

“—Doing here?” she finished. “Well, that would be on account of you and your stupid tendency to get yourself into trouble of the lethal kind. And my stupid tendency to keep pulling you out.”

Stiles frowned, and then it hit him. “The gas?” he asked. “That was you?”

She half-curtsied. “Naturally. You’re welcome, by the way. I accept payment in cash, check, or your firstborn child.”

“That’s fair, although think about it; what would you want with any children, let alone children related to me?”

Lydia pursed her lips. “True. I guess for now you’ll have to start by buying me a milkshake at Sadie’s.”

Stiles reached out and took her hand. “Gladly.” He frowned as he noticed the swatch of white bandage peaking out from behind Lydia’s hair. “What happened there?”

“A misunderstanding,” a new voice said, as a man stepped into the room behind her. He had blue eyes and smooth skin and pretty much fit the archetype for what Stiles was beginning to expect from all the people Allison secretly associated with. He seemed to radiate superiority like heat. He held out his hand.

“I’m Jackson,” he said. “You may know me as the person who saved Lydia’s life.”

“A regular knight in shining armor, once you stopped trying to kill me,” Lydia said dryly, stepping over to his side.

Stiles glanced between him and Lydia. “I’m sorry, but what?”

Lydia sighed. “They sent someone after me once they realized who was hacking their systems. Jackson took care of them, and then got us both out.”

“I follow that, but how exactly did you two get past the legions of jumpy guards and hundreds of feet of rock?”

“I carried her through another vent,” Jackson said simply. Clearly after this the Initiative was going to have a serious reworking of their ventilation security.

Seeing Stiles’s continued bewilderment, Lydia cleared her throat. “Stiles,” she said, “Jackson was working with Derek’s pack when he was… captured.”

“But we never captured any other…” Suddenly Chris Argent’s briefing and the mysterious and very much dead specimen leapt to mind. His eyes widened. “Aw, come on,” he moaned. “When I told you that you were one step away from dating a dead guy, I was totally not serious.”

“Excuse me, but not dead anymore,” Jackson interjected.

“But you are dating?!”

“Why don’t we put a pin in this conversation before Stiles coughs up a lung?” Lydia suggested. “Jackson, I’ll meet you outside.” He smiled that high-school quarterback smile and ducked out of the room.

“Plus what kind of terrible mortician just lets the corpses waltz out of the morgue?” Stiles complained as Lydia sat down on the bed beside him.

“Not a mortician anymore,” she reminded him. “As far as I know, the Initiative has no interest in hiring people who sabotage their defense systems to allow dangerous fugitives to escape.”

“Thanks again,” Stiles said weakly. “And really, you and Jackson?”

Lydia smiled. “We’ll see. The last two days have been—”

“Woah, woah, wait, two days?” Stiles said in disbelief. “What the hell are they putting in that gas?”

“Nothing your body particularly embraced,” Lydia said. “You’re lucky you’re alive.”

“Can’t get rid of me that easily,” Stiles said, casting a look over at Derek, who was pointedly ignoring their conversation. When he felt Stiles’s eyes, he glanced back over. Without his help in the vent, Stiles would probably be dead. He just wanted Derek to understand that.

“Anyways,” Lydia said. “I’ve got some pain meds right here. They should help you sleep better, too.”

“Thanks. And Lydia, I’m not going to lie; that Jackson guy seems like a douche, but if you like him then that’s what matters. So go, child, with my blessing,” he said, raising a hand to settle it on the crown of her head reverently. She batted it away.

“Quiet down and take your medicine, I’ve got to get ready.”

“Ready for what?” Stiles asked.

Lydia beamed. “We’ve organized a meeting with the commanders of the Initiative about negotiating a peace treaty between them and the Beacon Hills pack. It turns out having their daughter on the other side is a pretty big benefit. And who knows, if things go well maybe they’ll even give me my job back.”

Stiles grinned. “Can’t stand the thought of not pulling rank on me anymore, huh?”

“Guilty.”

Stiles twisted over to look at Derek. “Are you going too?”

Derek shook his head. “They thought it best if I wasn’t there. Something about acting with decorum.” His eyebrows knitted at that. They were impressive eyebrows.

“Bottoms up,” Lydia ordered, thrusting a handful of pills and a glass of water to his mouth. Stiles choked them down before lying back onto the pillow with a tired sigh. Lydia stood up and stretched before gifting him with a fond smile.

“I’m leaving,” she announced. “Get well. Or else.”

“Mmmhmm,” Stiles murmured to her retreating back. The door closed behind her with a soft click. To his surprise Derek stayed, leaning back slightly in his chair and reaching for his book.

“Er, Derek,” he said, earning himself a pair of raised eyebrows. “Not like I mind or anything, but… why are you here?”

Derek shrugged, and looked uncomfortable at the prospect of sharing feelings. “You’ve had plenty of time watching me at all hours of the day,” he said simply. “I figure by now you owe me some more of the same.”

Stiles smirked. “I guess I can live with that.” He paused. “But just a heads up, I might pass out again. You’re not going to kiss me again, are you?”

Derek frowned. “That wasn’t a kiss. That was mouth-to-mouth. The fact that you can’t tell the difference says a lot.”

“Yeah, well, it’s been—” Suddenly Derek leaned forward and his mouth pressed to Stiles’s. He breathed in sharply, surprise and other less innocent emotions making his heart beat faster. Derek’s lips were chapped and still carried a hint of toothpaste, and damn if this wasn’t ten times better than Stiles could have ever imagined it.

After a moment Derek pulled back slightly, his eyes matter-of-fact.

“That was a kiss,” he informed Stiles. “For future reference.”

“Yeah, I got that,” Stiles said, his head still swimming around in the vicinity of ‘holy shit’. “So…are you saying I can expect more of those in the future? Because I am totally more than cool with that.”

In answer Derek leaned forward and kissed him again, his hands sliding up over Stiles’s shoulders and fisting in the cloth. Stiles moved to press closer, arcing his back off the bed slightly to his fingers into Derek’s hair.

He immediately regretted it. It felt like someone had grabbed his lungs and squeezed, and he fell back onto the bed with a spluttering cough.

“I’m fine,” he groaned. “Come on, let’s make out some more.”

“I don’t think so, Stiles,” Derek said, pressing him back to the bed with a firm hand. “Just rest.”

Stiles was about to make a very convincing argument about the benefits of playing tongue hockey instead of lying around all day, but then the bed was comfortable and warm and his eyes were a lot heavier than they were.

“That would be the drugs kicking in,” he muttered through a suddenly thick tongue. “So unfair.”

“You’ll live. That’s the point.” Derek sat back in his chair, although he scooted it closer so he was right by the bed. Stiles watched him fondly.

“We’ll continue this conversation, and lack thereof, when I’m better,” he said, waving a finger with each word. “That’s a promise.”

“Sleep,” Derek said, in a voice that left little room for argument. Normally Stiles would have taken that as a challenge, but this time the alternative was too appealing. He closed his eyes, snuggled deeper into the bed and sighed through his nose.

“You going to be there the whole time?” He murmured.

“Yep.”

Stiles smiled to himself. “Creeper.”

“Shut up.”


End file.
